
JOHN ADAMS 



WHEEE 
AMEEICAN INDEPENDENCE 

BEGAN 

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BY 

DANIEL MUNRO WILSON 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1902 



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COPYRIGHT 1902 BY DANIEL MUNRO WILSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published December, iqoz 



TO MY WIFE 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



PREFACE 

My interest in the eminent men and women who 
have brought renown to old Braintree and Quincy 
increased rather than diminished with the pub- 
lication of "The Chapel of Ease and Church 
of Statesmen." Continued research, as far as 
devotion to other duties permitted, beguiled me 
ever more along the line of the development of 
the ideas of liberty and independence as illus- 
trated in the aspirations and deeds of Sir Harry 
Vane, the Rev. John Wheelwright, the Hoars, 
the Adamses, the Quincys, and the Hancocks. 
Here manifestly was a story of patriotic vision 
and achievement which had not been adequately 
told, at least in its continuity through so many 
successive generations of the leading families. 
As its various aspects claimed attention, a lecture 
or an article was written, and the whole finally 
wrought into the shape presented in these pages. 
This manner in which the book grew occasions 
a few repetitions; but these, it is hoped, will 
only deepen the local coloring. 



vi PREFACE 

To many persons I am indebted for gener- 
ous cooperation, and eagerness to make acknow- 
ledgment is the real excuse for this preface. 
The writings of Charles Francis Adams the 
younger, especially his " Three Episodes in 
Massachusetts History," — that fascinating nar- 
rative of the life of a town and of the evolution 
of a State in one, — have afforded a wealth of 
facts and suggestions. Mrs. Sarah H. Swan's 
too brief " Story of an Old House," pubHshed in 
the " New England Magazine," yielded helpful 
material ; and the researches of Mr. Lewis Bass 
and Mr. Edwin W. Marsh of Quincy, two " of 
the few remaining specimens of the antique 
stock," profited me much. Through the courtesy 
of Mr. Adams, Mr. J. P. Quincy, and Miss AHce 
Bache Gould, I was enabled to secure photo- 
graphs of treasured portraits which appear among 
the illustrations. To Mr. Fred B. Rice and Mr. 
Harry L. Rice I am also indebted for photo- 
graphs and efficient cooperation. Foster Bro- 
thers and Mr. C. B. Webster of Boston kindly 
furnished artistic reproductions of portraits and 
pictures of Quincy homes and scenes ; the " New 
England Magazine " cordially permits the incor- 
poration of the article on Tutor Flynt; and the 
Massachusetts Historical Society generously gave 



PREFACE vii 

access to its treasures, so well represented in the 
sketches of Miss Ehza Susan Quincy. To these 
and all others who rendered assistance, and they 
are many, I extend my most grateful thanks. 

Daniel Munro Wilson. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., November, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. TAQK 

I. Freedom's Heirs and Heritage .... 1 

n. License before Liberty 14 

ni. Liberty checked 27 

IV. Judith and Joanna 42 

V. The Great Advocate of Independence, John Adams G2 

VI. The Puritan President, John Quincy Adams . . 106 

VII. Charles Francis Adams and the War for the Union 122 

VIII. The Colonial Colonels 147 

IX. Dorothy Q. and Other Dorothys .... 191 

X. Tutor Flynt, New England's Earliest Humorist 228 

XI. Perambulation of Quincy 250 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAQE 

John Adams. By Copley Frontispiece 

Original in Memorial Hall, Harvard University. 
John Hancock. By Copley 10 

Original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

Site of Anne Hutchinson's Farm 28 

Mouth of "Mount Wollaston River" 28 

Rev. John Wheelwright. Artist unknown 32 

Original in State House, Boston. 

First Church from Old Burying-ground 56 

Coddington's Newport House 56 

Birthplace of the Presidents 68 

Sketch by Miss E. S. Quincy, 1822. 
Abigail Adams. By Blythe 76 

Owned by the Adams family. 
Adams Mansion (Vassall House) 98 

Sketch by Miss E. S. Quincy, 1822. 
Quincy Village 102 

Sketch by Miss E. S. Quincy, 1822. 
John Quincy Adams. By Copley 108 

Original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Owned by 
the Adams family. 
Louisa Catherine (Johnson) Adams. Artist unknown . . 108 

Owned by the Adams family. 
Adams Mansion 118 

From a recent photograph. 
Drawing-room in Adams Mansion 118 

Photographed during occupancy of C. F. Adams. 
Charles Francis Adams 122 

From a photograph. 
Abigail Brown (Brooks) Adams. By W. M. Hunt . . . 124 

Owned by the Adams family. 
John Quincy Adams o 140 

From a photograph. 
Charles Francis Adams, the Younger 142 

From a recent photograph. 
Charles Francis Adams, 2d 144 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTKATI0:NS 

Abigail Adams of to-day 144 

Older Quincy Mansion 148 

Judge Edmund Quincy. By Smibert 160 

Original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Owned by the 
Quincy family. From a photograph copyrighted 1897 
by Foster Bros. 
Older Quincy Mansion 162 

Sketch by Miss E. S. Quincy, 1822. 
Edmund Quincy 172 

From a portrait owned by Mrs. S. Andrews of Roxbury. 
Elizabeth (Wendell) Quincy. By Smibert 172 

Owned by Mrs. William D. Hodges. 
Colonel Josiah Quincy, 1709-84. By Copley 176 

Owned by Mr. J. P. Quincy. 
Later Quincy Mansion, built by Colonel Quincy 176 

Sketch by Miss E. S. Quincy, 1822. 

Samuel Quincy, the Tory. By Copley 178 

Josiah Quincy, Jr. By Stuart 180 

Original in the Old State House, Boston. 
President Josiah Quincy. By Stuart 182 

Original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. From a 
photograph copyrighted 1897 by Foster Bros. 

Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston, 184(5-48 186 

Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston, 1895-99 188 

"Dorothy Q." Artist unknown 204 

Owned by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Dining-room Older Quincy Mansion 212 

Dorothy Hancock. By Copley 224 

Original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Owned by 
Mr. Stephen Bo wen of Boston. 

" Dorothy Q." of to-day 226 

Tutor Flynt 230 

From an oil painting presented to Harvard College in 1787. 
Tutor Flynt's Study 234 

Photographed during occupancy of Hon. Peter Butler. 

Tutor Flynt's Chamber 240 

Quincy Centre 250 

Henry H. Faxon 254 

The Abigail Adams Cairn 258 

Birthplace of President John Quincy Adams .... 258 

Residence of Mrs. John Quincy Adams 262 

Quarries of the Granite Railway Company 264 

Thomas Crane 270 

Crane Memorial Hall 270 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

John Alexander (Gordon, M. D 274 

Adams Academy 276 

Presidents' Lane 276 

Adams Street 278 

City HospiTAii 278 



WHERE AMERICAN INDEPEN- 
DENCE BEGAN 



freedom's heirs and heritage 

American independence, still the latest heroic 
achievement of humanity, and momentous enough 
to furnish the date for the beginning of modern 
history, presents itself to the ordinary imagina- 
tion as the swift and common aspiration of a 
united people. Popularly it is supposed that 
at once and everywhere throughout the thirteen 
colonies, government by the consent of the gov- 
erned suddenly flamed wide and far as a noble 
ideal to be realized. And this is true, in the 
main, if we regard chiefly the armed conflict, 
that tragic drama, which registered the height 
of revolt against the oppressive measures of a 
mad king and his " deluded ministers." Spon- 
taneous was the outburst of patriotic valor from 
the river St. Croix to Florida. 

"Don't fire unless fired upon!" cried Captain 
Parker as the British regulars deployed before 
his minute-men on Lexington green, " but if 
they mean to have war let it begin here." And 



2 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

" begin here " it did, a continent in arms re- 
sponding to its first volley. 

But long before that fateful prelude many 
of those who now rushed to arms had cherished 
the thought of independence. Although not 
commonly held, it was in the air, as is the nature 
of the next high human attainment, fitfully con- 
centrating in regions far apart, and flashing out 
in electric disturbances. More than this, it may 
be safely asserted that in certain parts of the 
country the people were self-governing from the 
moment they set foot on these shores. They 
woidd abide no interference with their " just 
liberties," and, as Burke said, they " snuffed the 
approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." 
Independence ! It was no new thing to them 
when first flimg as a battle-cry in the face of 
British aggression ; they had never been any- 
thing but independent. True are the words of 
Mellen Chamberlain, who writes, " The mainte- 
nance of independence, rather than its acquire- 
ment, originated in a province, but at length, 
and mainly through the influence of John Adams, 
controlled the heart of the continent." To the 
same effect is the utterance of John Adams him- 
self. Up to him many looked as to the source of 
the idea of American self-government. With be- 
coming modesty, as well as conspicuous wisdom, 
he wrote, " Independence of English Church and 
State was the fundamental principle of the first 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 3 

colonization, has been its general principle for 
two hundred years, and I hope now is past dis- 
pute. Who, then, was the author, inventor, dis- 
coverer of independence ? The only true answer 
must be, the first emigrants." 

Of New England's " first emigrants " this is 
especially true. Plymouth colony was a pure 
democracy from the beginning ; and in the de- 
velopment of the Puritan settlements nothing 
is more marked than the resolute way in which 
unequal laws, favored at first by the few, were 
thrust aside, and the audacious persistence with 
which all interference by the mother country 
was opposed. The old ways of thinking and the 
habitual deference to social traditions faded 
away, now that they were removed three thou- 
sand miles from England, and left them free 
men in a wide world where only what was free 
eventually flourished. Governor Winthrop and 
others of the " better sort " brought with them 
remnants of the rule of the English squirearchy. 
They doubted the ability of the common people 
to govern themselves. " The best part of the 
people is always the least," was the sage utter- 
ance of Winthrop, " and of the best part the wiser 
is always the lesser." Soon, however, is it rue- 
fully noted by minister Ward that " the spirits 
of the people run high and what they get they 
hold." In town meetings (how Jefferson wished 
Virginia had them in the hour of controversy ! ), 



4 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

where all had equal voice if not equal vote ; in 
independent churches, where differences between 
'' brethren " gradually disappeared in the leveling 
sight of God, they exercised the natural and un- 
constrained rights of man. What to them was 
the " divine right of kings," when plain men 
could draw their laws from an open Bible and 
their manhood direct from the Almighty ? Thus 
it was that supremacy in human affairs was 
shifted from the hereditary prince, who felt him- 
self chosen of God, to farmers, mechanics, and 
tradesmen, who were persuaded they also had 
something divine in them. " Kings were made 
for the good of the people," declared James 
Otis in 1762, " and not the people for them." 
Long before that time many were troubled in 
theu' minds to know what kings were made for 
anyway. 

In their conflict with the Crown the settlers 
modestly claimed only the rights and liberties 
of Englishmen. They asked for no more ; they 
would be contented with nothing less. As a 
matter of fact, however, they enjoyed a degree 
of freedom far beyond the dreams of the Eng- 
lishman at home. But they had one thing in 
common with the men over sea, — a boundless 
respect for law and written documents. So be- 
cause they had a king's charter with a big seal, 
they were supported in their belief that it was 
only the ancient liberties of the mother country 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 5 

for which they were contending". The first gen- 
eration had not passed away when Governor Win- 
throp recorded what seemed to be the common 
opinion, — that their charter endowed them with 
" absolute powers of government ; for thereby we 
have power to make laws, to erect all sorts of 
magistracy, to correct, to punish, pardon, govern, 
and rule the people absolutely." That charter 
was a miraculous document. There was not any- 
thing in the way of human rights that they could 
not get out of it. As Daniel W. Howe writes 
in " The Puritan Republic," "the colonists viewed 
the charter granted them as a sort of compact 
guaranteeing them the right to set up an inde- 
pendent government of their own." Given them 
by Charles I., they quoted it against Charles II. 
They openly defied that " Merry Monarch " in 
his occasional attempts to seriously play the king. 
They were actually in rebellion, " and there is 
not the slightest doubt," says Howe, "that they 
would have been in armed rebellion if they had 
felt themselves ' abel ' to maintain it with any 
assurance of success." 

What the colonists were interpreting in this 
momentous controversy was not the charter, but 
human nature. Our ancestral god Thor, in his 
drinking bout with the giants, imagined he was 
draining only the great horn he put to his lips ; 
but the horn was secretly connected with the 
ocean, and it was the universal flood he was 



6 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

straining to drink dry. So in drawing upon the 
charter for their Hberties the men of Massachu- 
setts were not merely exhausting the hmited ele- 
ments of that instrument : they w^ere imbibing 
principles of absolute right and justice from that 
infinite source, the aspiring heart of man, where 
the divine and human are one. Charles II. and 
his ministers looked with utter amazement and 
impatience upon this performance, and when the 
Massachusetts General Court insultingly delayed 
yet again to send agents to treat of our " patent 
liberties," sheltering themselves behind the ludi- 
crous excuse that " proper persons were afraid of 
the seas, as the Turkish pirate had lately taken 
their vessels," the king wath a rough hand hur- 
ried the decree through the Court of Chancery 
which forever " canceled and annihilated " the 
precious charter. Two years later, in 1686, the 
first royal governor, Edmund Andros, arrived in 
Boston. Behind him was the undivided power 
of En Of land and the wrath of the narrow-minded 
James II. Resistance w^as useless. Massachu- 
setts, wdth a contumaciousness beyond that of 
every other province, had longest resisted the im- 
position of a royal governor. Now for all her 
braving of absolutism, she was to feel the full 
measure of oppression. With hardly another 
privilege left them than " not to be sold as 
slaves," her people lay prostrate. The thing 
their independent spirits had feared had come 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 7 

upon them. In bitterness of soul they meditated 
upon it — and waited. When time should serve 
they would rest in no neglect of their overlords 
across the sea ; they would trust in no charter, 
in no word of a king-, for their liberties. Of all 
these limitations they would free themselves when 
God should grant them opportunity. The mo- 
ment struck, so it seemed to them, when in the 
Revolution of 1688 the Stuarts were swept from 
the throne. Andros was seized, " bound in 
chains and cords," and for five weeks or more 
a Committee of Safety carried on the business 
of government. 

I3ut the end was not yet. Another charter 
was thrust upon them, and other governors were 
set to rule over them. Not as in the days of 
Andros were they again crushed beneath the yoke 
of ruthless despotism. Tyranny became trans- 
formed into something like the suzerainty which 
modern nations conceive may be in keeping with 
a high degree of civilization. It was at times 
quite reasonable. Indeed, England never ex- 
ploited the colonies for her own benefit, if we 
leave out the colossal selfishness of her com- 
merce. The " taxation without representation " 
was to raise money to be used entirely in the 
provinces. " Not a farthing was to leave Amer- 
ica." Yet, however mild the rule, it was not 
that of free men : it was not with the entire con- 
sent of the governed. Emanating from a remote 



8 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

and unsympathetic source, from a government in 
which they had no representation, from the will 
of a monarch who claimed to own them and 
their lands, it was in the nature of things capri- 
cious. The men of the Bay would have none 
of it. They contested every measure which did 
not originate with themselves. While some of 
the other provinces basked contentedly in the 
smiles of the royal governors and " far-off splen- 
dors of the Crown," they were in perpetual con- 
flict with Dudley, Hutchinson, and the rest. 
And when at last the sternest repressive measures 
were imposed upon the colonists, and many coun- 
seled submission, the stubborn resistance of the 
patriots of Massachusetts increased in sublimest 
proportion. Even Benjamin Franklin, acting as 
commissioner from Pennsylvania, acquiesced in 
the Stamp Act and was prepared to solicit posi- 
tions of stamp distributors for his friends ; but 
Boston led Hartford and other places in the 
Puritan colony in tumult against it. 

Thus the free spirit of the men of Massachu- 
setts, long disciplined in a strife which seemed 
discouragingly unequal, — the massive weight 
of old-world absolutism darkly arrayed against 
the cherished light of a new-world dawning, 
— beckoned the heroic road to armed revolt. 
Kesolutely followed the other colonists, daring all 
for what was seen to be the common cause, re- 
sponding generously with that " swift validity in 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 9 

noble veins." It was the test of American man- 
hood and ideals, and in their triumph was regis- 
tered the faithfulness and valor of the patriots. 
For precisely this manifestation of worth was 
waiting the next disclosure in human develop- 
ment. Thrilled are we to-day as the significance 
of the event looms large in the expanding power 
of the United States, whose fame and conquests 
(alas, that they are not all peaceable ! ) — 

" shower the fiery grain 
Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 
Between the northern and the southern morn." 

Independence dowered man with the gift of 
himself — with the right to be himself and to 
express himself. For all time now, and for the 
multitude, the way is open for the free unfolding 
of that supreme marvel and mystery, man's own 
being. Robust and self-assertive may be the 
manner in which democracy, in these too strenu- 
ous days, improves its chance. It is life, unmis- 
takably, free and aspiring life, with the moral 
ideal for permanent law. In the complete fiber- 
ation of human energy which almost appalls us; 
in the swift gathering of immeasurable forces; 
in the alignment of the new and the old so con- 
fusedly mingled, we may still see the command- 
ing power of America's ideas of independence 
and of the rights of man. These flung into the 
surging advance of civilization surely must in 
some fateful measure order its course and sub- 
due its turbulence. 



10 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

But obedience to the best for which the fathers 
fought halts at times deplorably; sorrowfully 
we are all saying it. Liberty is both abused 
and denied, — ideals are contemptuously flouted 
by brutal greed ; the people are exploited ; 
and independence won in the political field is 
threatened with defeat in the industrial field. 
Too new are the far-reaching commercial and 
industrial combinations of the hour for us to 
rightly estimate their effect upon individual 
liberty. Yet we surely know enough to realize 
that we have entered upon the next great phase 
in the evolution of society, and to fear that under 
the sway of vast corporations, both legitimate 
and buccaneering, we may all become under- 
lings. 

" And we petty men 
Walk under his huge legs and peep about 
To find ourselves dishonorable graves." 

The situation is, in its intensity, peculiarly 
American, the logical outcome of our first vic- 
tory for independence. Here human energies 
were earliest liberated, and here they have come 
to their most amazing development. Our in- 
dustrial leaders, our trust magnates, our million- 
aires, are they not of the people, men from the 
ranks, who are winners in a game the most of us 
play or applaud ? The sons of liberty in all 
this Yankee nation, alert, direct in methods, are 
applying the marvels of their inventive genius 




JOHN HANCOCK 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 11 

and organizing capacity to the fecund earth and 
an expanding commerce, in a passion to make a 
living, and a good one. The resulting opulence, 
grasped at by most, is being garnered in aston- 
ishing heaps by the shrewd and enterprising. A 
perilous state of affairs, we say ; but is it not 
the result of the ^^ American idee: to make a 
man and let him be " ? And is not the situation 
relieved somewhat by the splendid administra- 
tive ability and unprecedented generosity exhib- 
ited ? We seem at times to be but one remove 
from the reign of the ideal captains of industry, 
who will consider their endowments as sacred 
as those of prophet, or teacher, or Father of 
his country, and consecrate themselves, their 
methods, and their opportunities to the service 
of their race. However this may be, the way 
out of our troubles, it is not too much to say, 
will be won by the same free energy which has 
brought us to where we are, — that is indomitable. 
We may be astounded at its excesses ; we must 
marvel at its possibilities. Independence jealously 
upheld before trusts and political '' bosses," and 
unselfishly communicated, as a sacrament, to the 
nation's wards is, as John Adams prophesied with 
his parting breath, " Independence forever ! " 

In no other community in the colony of 
Massachusetts was the love of independence 
more central than in the North Precinct of 
the old town of Braintree, later set off and 



12 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPEISTDENCE BEGAN 

named Quincy. Nowhere else was the right 
of self-government more tenaciously held, and 
no other spot is more sacredly devoted to free- 
dom by the sacrifices and cherished visions of 
its inhabitants. So typical in its development 
that C. F. Adams, the younger, illustrates by it 
the unfolding thought and institutions of Massa- 
chusetts; it is also renowned for anticipating be- 
yond other towns the manifest destiny of the 
colonies. There the word Independence had its 
earliest historical utterance, and there some of 
its most illustrious champions had their origin. 

John Adams, the great advocate of inde- 
pendence, and Samuel Adams, the " Father of 
the American Revolution," had in Henry Adams 
of Braintree the same progenitor. They were 
cousins in the fourth generation from that " first 
emigrant," Henry. Though Samuel was born in 
Boston, September 16, 1722, he was so closely 
associated with the Braintree cousins and so allied 
to them in the essential qualities of character 
that it is not going too far afield to include 
him within that group of famous persons who 
made the annals of this ancient town on the 
south of Boston so memorable with their high 
aspirations and devoted patriotism. These two 
are commanding figures, but other men, sons of 
old Braintree and Quincy, men whose names 
will never be obliterated from the splendid page 
which tells the story of the Kevolution, stood 



FREEDOM'S HEIRS AND HERITAGE 13 

with them, shoulder to shoulder in the hour of 
conflict. We have but to name the Quincys and 
John Hancock, to indicate their high character 
and achievements. Add to these Abigail Adams 
and the " Dorothy Q." who married Hancock, 
and there is presented a group of distinguished 
patriots hardly excelled by that which made 
famous the far larger town of Boston. 

In the aspirations and heroisms of that little 
community of Braintree, now Quincy, was sur- 
prisingly manifested the genius of the Ameri- 
can people. There, if it may be said of any one 
place. Independence began. Its history is on a 
small scale the record of the development of the 
ideals of the Kepublic ; its great citizens in 
every critical period devoted themselves with 
entire unselfishness and telling powers to the 
service of the nation. Few towns can boast 
of annals more brightly colored, not only with 
the deeds of patriots, but with the surprises of 
romance ; not only with the sturdy enterprises 
of plain liberty-loving farmers, but with the 
debonair discourse and activities of the colo- 
nial gentility. 



n 

LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 

For a region predestined to witness the 
triumphs of sober, industrious men and women 
and aspiring patriots, that parcel of the green 
earth known as Quincy presented an opening 
scene so ludicrous, so opera bouffe in character, 
as to be prophetic of everything but the actual 
event. A set of scapegraces possessed it, who 
played out their fantastic tricks as if in illustra- 
tion of the kind of people from which no great 
nation can originate. Here, between serious 
Plymouth on the one side and Puritan Boston 
on the other, were wildly enacted two of the most 
^^ singular and incongruous episodes " which 
light up New England history. Sir Christopher 
Gardiner, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and 
his "comly Yonge Woman " built their bower on 
a hummock overlooking the Neponset River, se- 
curing a retreat only too transitory from inquisi- 
tive Boston and a cold world, much disturbed 
because she had a past, and he lived a double 
life ; and little more than a mile away rises 
Mount Wollaston, that opprobrious hill, that 
" Mount Dagon " (as the brethren of Plymouth 



LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 15 

and Boston vmited to call it) where Thomas 
Morton and his set of runagates let themselves 
loose in the freedom of the wilderness. 

Motley, in his romance of " Merry-Mount/' 
and Hawthorne, in his " Maypole of Merry- 
Mount," entertain us delightfully with the ex- 
ploits of Morton and his fellows. Grave History 
herself, in the " Three Episodes," while trying 
to tie to truth the untethered imaginations of 
the romancers, laughs out in delight and derision 
as she contemplates the uncouth hilarity of the 
rude settlers and the comedy of their suppression 
by Miles Standish and Governor Endicott. Mor- 
ton deliberately formed a band of free compan- 
ions out of the servants of Captain WoUaston, 
who in 1625 set up a trading-post on the shore. 
This was done while Wollaston was on a voyage 
to Virginia, where, if he did not sell anything 
else, he profitably disposed of some of the ser- 
vants, or of the years of labor yet to be fulfilled 
according to the bond of their indentures. Such 
a procedure, threatening to break up the Massa- 
chusetts settlement, troubled Morton, and at the 
same time furnished him with an argument to 
win the assent of the remaining servants to the 
scheme he had been hatching. He was an ener- 
getic man, a leader among them, being one of 
the gentlemen adventurers who had planned 
the expedition. Withal he was a poet ; that is, 
a good enough poet to throw off a tavern catch 



16 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

or to indite a dubious ballad to the barmaid, 
and had professional training sufficient to be 
scornfully characterized by Governor Bradford 
of Plymouth as a " kind of a pettifogger of 
Furnevell's Inne." He described himself as " of 
Clifford's Inn, Gent." "This man/' writes 
Adams, " born a sportsman, bred a lawyer, in- 
grained a humorist and an adventurer, by 
some odd freak of destiny was flung up as a waif 
in the wilderness on the shores of Boston Bay." 
It was in the fall of 1626 that Morton induced 
the few unsold servants to throw off all allegiance 
to Captain Wollaston, and form a band of equals, 
with him at their head, to the end that they 
might get all profit in trade with the Indians 
and live as they pleased. So it came about that 
here in the shade of the solemn woods, here 
against the austere background of Puritanism, 
was exhibited a transplanted bit of the boister- 
ous animalism of the unregenerate Englishman 
of that day, who swaggered as kingsman and 
cavalier in contemptuous flouting of all Round- 
heads and sour fanatics. Here were " cakes and 
ale " for all, in the large log house which shel- 
tered them. And here on May Day, 1627, was 
set up, with abundant shouting and carousing, a 
mighty Maypole, eighty feet high, garlanded 
with ribbons and surmounted with the spreading 
antlers of a buck. Morton was " mine host " of 
the occasion. He furnished a barrel of beer and 



LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 17 

stronger liquors in bottles, and affixed to the 
pole a poem, which, as he said, " being Enig- 
matically composed, pusselled the Separatists 
most pittifully to expound it." A song he made 
also ; and at the psychological moment when all 
had joined hands about the Maypole and were 
warmed with drink, a tuneful reveler " without 
any mitigation or remorse of voice " chanted 
the staves, the rest joining with ready chorus. 
Around it and around, in wild whirling, danced 
the Bacchanals and the " lasses in beaver coats." 
^' Drink and be merry, merry, merry boys," they 
sanof, and the forest resounded to the refrain, — 

" lo, to Hymen now the day is come ! 
About the merry May-pole take a Roome." 

It was n't puritanical. The scandal of it amazed 
Plymouth and Salem. To be sure, Morton, in a 
serious moment, when he was bidding for sup- 
port against the Puritans, asserted that he " was 
a man that endeavored to advance the dignity of 
the Church of England," and wished it to be 
understood that the good time of the boys was 
tempered with " the laudable use of the Book of 
Common Prayer." Puritanism was all the more 
resolved to have none of them, and a little 
later, when they imperiled the entire colony by 
selling firearms to the savages, the abolition of 
misrule was no longer delayed. Suddenly Miles 
Standish and his invincible army descended upon 
Merry-Mount and captured Morton ; Endicott 



18 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

with grim promptitude sailed over from Salem 
and hewed down the Maypole ; and finally, when 
Morton was being conveyed in a vessel to Eng- 
land, events were so timed that his house was 
burned in his sight, to the end " that the habi- 
tation of the wicked should no more appear in 
Israel." It was root and branch work, reso- 
lutely meant to be such. But do we not see, by 
the light of these modern days, that it was the 
Puritan, for all his assumed dominion, who was 
the sporadic and the passing ? His reign is over. 
It is now, as ever, " Drink and be merry, merry 
boys ! " Pleasure is in the saddle, and " It 's 
ride mankind ! " 

What of Sir Christopher Gardiner all this 
time, that gentle knight of romance, who was in 
the very storm centre of this raging of the deep- 
est passions of the human heart ? He, too, was 
swept from his chosen retreat, and suffered vicis- 
situdes as surprising as any that had hitherto 
befallen him in his adventurous life. His " coun- 
try seat " was near enough Merry-Mount for him 
to see the smoke of the destruction of its strong- 
hold, and it is not at all unlikely that he often 
enjoyed its camaraderie before it was scattered 
up and down the coast by Miles Stan dish. As- 
sent is to be yielded to Longfellow when, by the 
lips of " the Landlord," he says that Gardiner 
made small account of his professions to join the 
Puritan church; — 



LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 19 

" And passed his idle hours instead 
With roystering Morton of Merry-Mount, 
That pettifogger from Furnival's Inn, 
Lord of misrule and riot and sin, 
Who looked on the wine when it was red." 

Brief was the knight's sojourn on these shores, 
but there is no doubt that every moment of the 
time he was an object of absorbing interest. 
He arrived here in April of 1630, about a month 
before Winthrop and his company began the 
settlement of Boston. The singularity of such 
a hermit in the wilderness immediately attracted 
the attention of the newcomers. There was an 
air of mystery about him ; his life and purpose 
were not above suspicion. Less than this was 
enough to arouse the piercing inquisitiveness of 
the Puritans. Where did he come from ? Why 
was he here ? Who was the '' comly Yonge wo- 
man " with whom he lived? He gave it out 
that he was weary of life in the Old World, su- 
perior now, as may be imagined, to its sins and 
vanities, and sought for himself and his " cousin, 
Mary Grove," rest in the peaceful wilderness. 
How touching this return to nature ! A little 
worldly pride remained, however, — blood will 
assert itself, — for he intimated that his father 
was brother to the famous Stephen Gardyner, 
Bishop of Winchester and lord chancellor of 
Queen Mary, whom Shakespeare makes Henry 
Vni. describe as of "a cruel nature and 
bloody.'' Mr. Adams, in his careful monograph 



20 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

on Gardiner, contests so close a relationship. 
It is evident, he admits, that he was a man of 
culture, widely acquainted with the world, and 
a genuine knight. For this — and his cousinly 
relations — he certainly deserved the distin- 
guished consideration accorded him by Governor 
Winthrop and the other Boston magistrates. 

" It was Sir Christopher Gardiner, 
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, 
From Merry England over the sea, 
Who stepped upon this continent 
As if his august presence lent 
A glory to the colony. 

** You should have seen him in the street 
Of the little Boston of Winthrop's time, 
His rapier dangling at his feet, 
Doublet and hose and boots complete. 
Prince Rupert hat with ostrich plume. 
Gloves that exhaled a faint perfume. 
Luxuriant curls and air sublime, 
And superior manners now obsolete ! " 

For the " swagger " clothes in which Long- 
fellow arrays the knight, the Puritans would 
have no regard. They scorned with more than 
Carlyle's bitterness the " despicable biped " who 
trusted in appearances and was only ornamental. 
So when the shameful news came from England 
that he " had two wives now living at a house in 
London," they commended their prophetic souls 
with an " I told you so," and prepared to dis- 
cipline Gardiner at the earliest opportunity. The 
two wives had not lived long together. Con- 



LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 21 

tinuous and amicable relations are not usual 
with such, outside of Mormondom. They had 
just foregathered. The first Lady Gardiner, 
whom he had married in Paris, hearing he had 
again married in England, hurried over in search 
of him. But she came too late, and found 
only the second Lady Gardiner anxiously looking 
up his whereabouts. Besides betraying and de- 
serting her, after the knightly fashion of King 
Charles's court, he had, so she declared, robbed 
her of " many rich jewels, much plate, and costly 
service." The wives joined in a petition that he 
should be sent back to England. Wife the first 
still loved him and hoped to convert him ; wife 
the second craved his destruction and a chance 
to express her mind to that ordinary wretch, 
Mary Grove, with whom he was now living in 
America. 

Gardiner, suspiciously alert, caught the rumor 
that the news of his double life was circulating in 
Boston and that the magistrates w^ere likely to ap- 
prehend him. Asa matter of record they had voted, 
summarily and regardless of anything that he 
might say in his own defense, to send him a pris- 
oner to England. From his home on a woody 
hummock on the south of the Neponset a sharp 
lookout was kept up and down the river, and at the 
first sight of the officers coming to arrest him, he 
was off, with a gun on his shoulder and " rapier 
dangling at his feet," and away into the wilder- 



22 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

ness. Only the servants and Mary Grove, " the 
little lady with golden hair/' as Longfellow de- 
scribes her, were found in the house. Mary was 
arrested, and when brought before her stern 
judges quite baffled them, so " impertinent and 
close " was she, " confessing no more than was 
wrested from her by her own contradictions." 
" So," continues Dudley, " we have taken order 
to send her to the two wives in old England to 
search her further." It was about the end of 
March, 1631, that the descent was made upon 
Gardiner's home, and for a month or so he 
rano^ed the woods in the mud and chill of New 
England's early spring. Then the Indians, in- 
cited thereto by the governor of Plymouth, cap- 
tured him in the neighborhood of Taunton River. 
" When they came near him," wrote Bradford 
in his " Plimoth Plantation," " whilst he pre- 
sented his piece at them to keep them off, the 
streame carried ye canow against a rock, and 
tumbled both him and his pece & rapier into 
ye water ; yet he got out, and having a little 
dagger by his side, they durst not close with 
him, but getting longe pols, they soone beat his 
dagger out of his hand, so he was glad to yeeld ; 
and they brought him to ye Govr. But his 
hands and armes were swolen & very sore with 
ye blowes they had given him. So he used him 
kindly, & sent him to a lodging wher his armes 
were bathed and anoynted, and he was quickly 



% 

LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 23 

well agayne, and blamed ye Indians for beating 
him so much. They said that they did but a 
little whip him with sticks." 

The Plymouth people passed him on to the 
Boston magistrates, together with a " little^ note 
booke that by accidente had sHpt out of his 
pockett, or some private place, in which was a 
memoriall what day he was reconciled to ye pope 
& church of Rome, and in what universitie he 
took his scapula and such and such degrees." 

Anticipate now what measure of retribution 
would be meted out by the stern Puritans to this 
dissembling CathoHc, this " Snake which Lay 
Latent in the Tender Grass," this faithless hus- 
band and violator of half the commandments. He 
himself looked for the worst they could do. Did 
he not have in mind all they had wrought upon 
Morton ? What actually ensued is the surprise 
of the whole episode, and the closing chapter of 
his New England experience is surely one of the 
drollest in colonial history. Governor Winthrop 
neither disciplined him nor sent him a prisoner to 
England, but used "him according to his qualitie," 
and ofave him the freedom of the town. He was 
saved by the mystery attendant upon his knightly 
presence among exiled separatists and wild sav- 
ages. This they could not quite penetrate. The 
" woman in the case " was no sufficient explana- 
tion, and they had respect for the unknown 
which yet lurked in the shadows of his career. 



24 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

At last it leaked out (they intercepted his let- 
ters) that he was the secret agent of Sir Ferdi- 
nando Gorges, who was contesting before the 
Crown the right of the Puritans to great tracts 
of land north of Boston. Now that the heart of 
his mystery was plucked out, he became in their 
eyes a poor creature, and they suffered him to 
go up and down as he pleased. Like another 
Sir Philip Sidney, his knightly spirit resorted to 
poetry to relieve the tedium of exile. Here is a 
poem of his, composed, as Morton ironically ob- 
served, as a testimony of Gardiner's "love towards 
them that were so ill affected towards him : " — 

" Wolves in sheep's clothing, why will ye 
Think to deceive God that doth see 
Your simulated sanctity ? 
For my part I do wish you could 
Your own infirmities behold, 
For then you would not be so bold. 
Like Sophists, why will you dispute 
With wisdom so ? For shame, be mute ! 
Lest great Jehovah, with his power, 
Do come upon you in an hour 
When you least think, and you devour." 

Throuo^h the summer of 1631 he lived in 
Boston and at his home on the banks of the Ne- 
ponset, and then in the month of August he was 
associated once more with Mary Grove in a man- 
ner eminently proper and prosaic. How tragi- 
cally the romancers end her fateful destiny ! In 
" Hope LesHe " she is overcome with jealousy, 
sets fire to a barrel of gunpowder on board a 
ship in Boston Harbor, and in a moment " the 



LICENSE BEFORE LIBERTY 25 

hapless girl, — her guilty destroyer, — his vic- 
tim, — the crew, — the vessel, rent to fragments, 
were hurled into the air and soon engulfed in 
the waves." Motley, in " Merry-Mount," brings 
her to despair, in which mood she steals from 
her guardians into a December landscape, where 
" the driving hurricanes wrapped her as she 
slept in an icy winding sheet, and the wintry 
wind sounded her requiem in the tossing pine 
branches." Then, more kindly, Mr. John T. 
Adams, in his " Knight of the Golden Melice," 
sends her back to Europe in noble company, as 
befitted one highly born, to end her days peace- 
fully as abbess of Saint Idlewhim. Lastly, Whit- 
tier, in "Margaret Smith's Journal," confesses 
he had not learned what became of Sir Christo- 
pher and the " young woman his cousin," while 
Longfellow melodiously sings that the governor 

" sent her away in a ship that sailed 
For Merry England over the sea, 
To the other two wives in the old countree, 
To search her further, since he had failed 
To come at the heart of the mystery." 

But what are the facts? Plain as the unearthed 
bones of neolithic man, precious to science, Mr. 
C. F. Adams, the younger, spreads them before 
us unadorned. Thomas Purchase, a pioneer of 
Maine, sailed into Boston in search of axes, fish- 
lines, etc., and a wife. He met Mary Grove, who 
found favor in his eyes. All in a week or two, 
as the need was, he courted and married her. 



26 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

and then when they set their faces eastward 
the knight himself went with them. What sim- 
plicity and artlessness and frank abandon of 
social prejudices ! It was all proper enough — 
could it be anything else with the Puritans for 
sponsors ? And how deliciously level with the 
elemental needs of the natural man ! He needed 
shelter and comfort, and she had both to bestow. 
Their home was in that part of the Maine plan- 
tations now known as the town of Brunswick 
and celebrated as the seat of Bowdoin College, 
and here Gardiner abode till midsummer of 1632, 
when he returned to England. 

Only one trace of his life in the Purchase 
domicile remains. It is, however, luminous. 
Nine years after he sailed away Thomas Purchase 
was compelled by the court to pay for a fowling 
piece the knight had bought and for a warming 
pan he had borrowed in the name of his host. 
Most strenuously " T. Purchase denies ever au- 
thorizing Sir C. Gardiner to buy " either article ; 
but poetic justice was done. The cost of the 
warming pan which comforted the first partner 
of Mary Grove came, as was due, from the pocket 
of the second partner. " Considering all the 
circumstances of the case, the inclemency of the 
season and the place and the agency through 
which Sir Christopher's couch had been widowed, 
the intrinsic justice of the finding is apparent." 



Ill 

LIBERTY CHECKED 

The wilderness was left once more to its sa- 
cred silences and the summer's monody of wind 
and wave, and so had slept for four years, when 
the men of serious temper, fit founders of homes 
and builders of states, appeared upon the scene. 
Most of them migrated from Boston, where the 
earliest settlers, wrought upon by the keen earth- 
hunger of the Anglo-Saxon, were feeling crowded 
on their three-hilled peninsula. Some came di- 
rectly from ship in the company organized by the 
Rev. Thomas Hooker, which began to " sit down 
at the Mount," but were soon ordered elsewhere. 
Among these, it is probable, was Henry Adams, 
with his large family, who was contented to abide 
on the beautiful spot where first he had erected 
his rough shelter. Notable has he become as 
the earliest American ancestor of the Presidents. 
Interest then centred, however, upon two men 
who were among those of most consideration 
in the Boston settlement. Stout William Cod- 
dington and Edmund Quincy were granted large 
allotments of land by the town of Boston in 
1635, and they now sailed over to " the Mount/' 



28 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

■where Boston " had enlargement," to bound out 
their quite baronial acres. Coddington was its 
treasurer, builder of its first brick house, and re- 
puted the wealthiest man in the community; while 
Quincy, inheriting name and blood from a long 
line of gentle ancestry running beyond a " Sieur 
de Quincy " to the age when " the galloping 
Normans came," was respected for his conspicu- 
ous intelligence, constancy, and worth. He first 
came to Massachusetts in 1628. It was after he 
returned here with his family, September 4, 1633, 
that he formed the partnership with Coddington. 
Their quality commanded the pick of the land. 
So, as the shore was most sought after, they set 
their bounds from the old Dorchester line at 
Squantum southwardly to Hough's Neck, and a 
mile or more inland. 

Large and pleasant and fruitful were the acres 
they acquired. Within their limits were the 
"Massachusetts Fields," the home and plant- 
ing-ground of the tribe of the Massachusetts, 
from which the bay and later the State were 
named. The crescent shore, shaded by the pri- 
meval forests to the wave-washed sands, more 
beautiful even than now delights the eye, did 
woo to " the pleasing content of crossing the 
sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams 
of a calm sea," as that earhest of its explorers, 
Captain John Smith, declared. Inland the glori- 
ous landscape mounted, terrace above terrace, to 
the massive summits of the Blue Hills. 




SITE OF ANNE HUTCHINSON'S FARM 




MOUTH OF "MOUNT WOLLASTON RIVER" 



LIBERTY CHECKED 29 

The most convenient and attractive spot for 
human habitation, in all this wide domain, was 
carefully sought out by the two friends. Just 
where " Mt. Wollaston river " ceased to be nav- 
igable, and the clear, fresh waters of a brook 
musically mingled with the brine ; where the 
land lay level, easy to plough or to build upon, 
and the gleam of a miniature lake was seen 
through the trees, they ended their quest. The 
treasurer of the colony, having means all his 
own (the peculator is a sport of recent growth), 
was the first of the two companions to build 
a farmhouse by the " sweet murmuring noise " 
and " fine meanders of the brook." We are quot- 
ing from Morton of Merry-Mount, whose bac- 
ehantic joyousness, as we must say to his praise, 
was frequently subdued to a sympathy with 
nature wholly modern. Is not this a quite sur- 
passing description of the very scenery upon 
which Coddington's eye fell? — "And when I 
had more seriously considered of the beauty of 
the place, with all her fair endowments, I did 
not think that in all the known world it could be 
paralleled ; for so many goodly groves of trees, 
dainty, fine, round, rising hillocks ; delicate fair 
large plains, sweet crystal fountains, and clear 
running streams that twine in fine meanders 
through the meads, making so sweet a murmur- 
ing noise to hear as would even lull the senses 
with delight asleep." 



30 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

This infinite loveliness, the blue heavens in 
their clearness, the wine-like tonic of the air, 
the wide freedom, were now Coddington's. His 
was the rapture which visits the soul of every 
rightly developed man who ventures into virgin 
realms of the palm or pine ; his " a melancholy 
better than all mirth," as in that solemn wilder- 
ness he founded a home for heart's love and for 
a fresh start for humanity. Directing and shar- 
ing the labors of the stout craftsmen who sailed 
over from Boston with him, he experienced the 
real divineness of work here in the open, in the 
plenitude of God's sunshine, — the elements in 
league with the mt of his brain and the strength 
of his hand. Toil like this, which means adjust- 
ment to nature, not triumph over prostrate fellow 
beings, makes men. What are we making in this 
commercial age, with its sharp competitions, its 
smart exploitations, its successes which dispense 
with conscience and are built upon defeat and 
death ? Money, delirious amounts of it, doubt- 
less, but not men, — not what in the sight of 
heaven's ideal you would exactly call men. 

The habitation which Coddington then built, 
about 1636, still stands. It is not large, but 
throughout it shows good work. The carpenters 
luxuriated in the abundance of timber, and sated 
their honest English love of solid construction 
by using a superfluity of beams a foot or more 
in thickness ; and there they are to-day, square 



LIBERTY CHECKED 31 

hewed, and for the most part sound and hard as 
iron. In plan it is similar to a second house Cod- 
dington built in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1639, 
the year after he was driven from Massachusetts. 
Two stories and an attic in height we perceive it to 
have been, in spite of later alterations ; the upper 
stories overhanging the lower one in front, and 
the bulky chimney, visible on the outside, filHng 
up almost the entire breadth of the west end. In- 
side, the kitchen or general living-room was almost 
co-extensive with the entire floor ; and here is the 
capacious open fireplace six feet high, flanked 
by the roomy brick oven. What generous living 
is suggested by these ancient utilities ! Blazing 
logs heaped high with unstinted hand, homely, 
wholesome fare, making the strong stronger, 
pleasurably appeasing appetites made keen by 
natural toil under the open sky and in the free, 
unpolluted air. As Emerson says of his fellow 
campers in the Adirondacks : the plain fare after 
woodsman's toil " all ate like abbots." 

" And Stillman, our guides' guide, . . . said aloud, 
' Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating 
Food indigestible : ' — then murmured some, 
Others applauded him who spoke the truth." 

In the second story were two chambers, the 
chief one, with fireplace as huge as that in the 
room below, reserved for Coddington. He never 
transferred his residence to " the Mount ; " this 
would have come later. Now, when his oversight 



32 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

was needed, he left his brick house in Boston 
and stayed at the farm. Lawyer Lechford, who 
assisted Coddington to dispose of his estate, 
records in his " Note Book " that WilHam Tyng, 
the purchaser, stipulates that when he visits the 
farm he " shall have the use of the chamber 
which Mr. Coddington used to lye in for his 
lodging." 

The farm was generously stocked with cattle, 
and a great barn was built ; but Coddington 
was drawn thither by love of liberty, as well 
as by landlord cares. Here with his compan- 
ions — Sir Harry Vane, William Hutchinson, 
Rev. John Wheelwright, Edmund Quincy, and 
many another — he held high debate of the ways 
in which their dearly bought freedom should be 
maintained and toleration in religion be secured. 
It was the time of that bitter struggle in which 
the colony was so early involved, misnamed the 
" Antinomian controversy." In that conflict, 
says Adams, the nascent commonwealth was con- 
fronted with " the issue between religious toler- 
ation and compelled theological conformity." 
These choice spirits met from time to time in 
Coddington's farmhouse. Had they triumphed, 
our modern New England ancestor worshiper 
might now have an ideal to adore as worthy in 
all respects as in fond imagination he paints the 
Puritan. Baptists might not have been banished, 
Quakers and witches might not have been done 




REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT 



LIBERTY CHECKED 33 

to death, and a hundred years of intellectual 
torpor and bigotry might not have blighted the 
fair promise of Massachusetts history. " It was 
plainly a period of intellectual quickening, — a 
dawn of promise." 

A woman it was, vivacious, witty, ambitious, 
who awoke in the infant colony that antagonism 
between the free spirit of man and dull formu- 
laries which latent or active is present in every 
generation. Mistress Anne Hutchinson, con- 
tumeliously snubbed for being " but a woman," 
was at first commended for explaining to her less 
enlightened sisters the ponderous sermons of the 
preachers. Earliest is she among those superfine 
and audacious reforming intelligences now dis- 
tinguished as " the Boston woman," and she was 
the first to gather in Boston a woman's club. 
All went well — the whole church flocked to her 
home — until, feeling that in this new land she 
was a chartered freeman, she uttered without 
restraint her soul's burden. She dared to speak 
" thoughts not usual among us," and actually 
had the effrontery to criticise minister Wilson 
and some other case-hardened clerics for being 
" under a covenant of works." Opposition was 
aroused and sides were taken. 

At this juncture there arrived in the colony 
the Rev. John Wheelwright, college mate of 
Oliver Cromwell, intrepid of speech, compact of 
the stuff martyrs are made of. Related to the 



34 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Hutchinsons by marriage, and himself a free 
spirit, he at once zealously espoused the cause of 
the liberals. He was a minister after their own 
mind, and they were swift to propose that he be 
elevated to the Boston pulpit alongside Wilson 
and Cotton. Objections w^ere raised. A pain- 
ful situation impended through long Sabbath 
debates, which was reHeved finally by the peti- 
tion of the residents of " the Mount " that 
Wheelwright be granted them to gather a 
church there. It was a happy inspiration of the 
hberal leaders. " The Mount " was their elect 
settlement. Besides Coddington and Quincy, 
the Hutchinsons themselves had taken up farms 
here, and Atherton Hough — a magistrate and 
man of wealth, who owned the neck which now 
bears his name — was in sympathy with them, 
and Stout Deacon Bass of Roxbury was prepar- 
ing to join them. Behind this group and rein- 
forcing it was a wide sprinkling of settlers, — 
sturdy yeomen of England, selected from their 
fellows by freedom and a sincerer faith. Some 
of the earliest to arrive — like Henry Adams 
— were of Rev. Mr. Hooker's company, which 
landed in 1632. An air of romance and fine- 
spun idealism imparts itself to the movement as 
one thinks of the interest taken in it by young 
Sir Harry Vane, at this time governor of the 
settlement. Said Wendell Phillips in one of his 
speeches : " Carlyle admonished young men to lay 



LIBERTY CHECKED 35 

aside their Byron for Goethe. I say, lay aside 
your Luther for your Harry Vane." Would this 
youthful ruler, "young in years, but in sage coun- 
sel old," have remained in the New World, would 
he have taken up broad acres of land at " the 
Mount," thrown in his fortunes with the Quincys, 
the Coddingtons, the Hutchinsons, the Adamses, 
if the liberal movement had been successful ? 
It is not improbable. Vane left England with 
the serious intention of uniting with the Puritans 
here and working out with them his conceptions 
of freedom and religion. On his departure a 
friend of his father, Mr. Gerrard, wrote to Lord 
Conway, " Sir Harry Vane has as good as lost 
his eldest son, who is gone to New England for 
conscience' sake. He likes not the discipline of 
the Church of England. None of our ministers 
will give him the sacrament standing, and no 
persuasions of the bishops nor authority of his 
parents will prevail with him. Let him go ! " 

Two months of Wheelwright's ministration 
had hardly elapsed when a committee of eight 
with Vane at their head " was chosen to consider 
of Mt. WoUaston business — how there may be 
a church and town there." For twelve months 
from December, 1636, Wheelwright labored with 
these congenial spirits. Manifestly a church 
after the new way of toleration and expanding 
ideas was rootincr itself in the virmn soil of the 
Puritan settlement. Worship in the outset, it 



36 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

may be, consecrated the Coddington house, and 
here at first Wheelwright may have lodged. But 
early in the spring of 1637 a meeting-house 
was built. Its completion, Adams surmises, may 
have been celebrated on May 24, a day made 
a fast for humiliation and conference over the 
deplorable differences. Vane and Coddington, 
grieved and indignant at the harsh measures 
of the conservatives, turned their backs on this 
conference and kept the fast with Wheelwright 
at "the Mount." These were eventful days. 
The distractions had rapidly culminated almost 
to armed conflict. 

At another fast a few months earher. Wheel- 
wright had preached a sermon in Boston, in 
which he spoke about a " spiritual combat " and 
"spiritual weapons." His antagonists affected 
to beheve this was a concealed call to arms. 
They spread among themselves " a silent de- 
cree that Wheelwright was to be disciplined." 
There was a summoning of the " legalist " 
hosts from all the neighboring tow^ns. Minister 
Wilson mounted a tree and harangued the vot- 
ers. Boston was outnumbered. The General 
Court declared Wheelwright guilty of sedition ; 
Yane was defeated for governor ; Coddington 
and Hough were put out of the magistracy. 
Is it to be w^ondered at that they ignored the 
conference and resorted to Coddington's farm- 
house and Wheelwright's church ? 



LIBERTY CHECKED 37 

Later Mrs. Hutchinson was arraigned for the 
meetings held at her house, — "a thing not toler- 
able nor comely in the sight of God nor fitting for 
her sex/' — and banished. Wheelwright, " like 
Koger Williams, or worse," was banished. Their 
adherents were deprived of arms and otherwise 
treated with ignominy, and Coddington fled for 
freedom to Khode Island, where he became its 
first governor. Edmund Quincy, a little before 
this, had passed from earth. Had he lived, he too 
would have been forced into the deeper wilder- 
ness. As for Vane, indignation and sorrow con- 
tended in his heart for mastery. The cause he 
loved had lost its fairest opportunity. He himself 
was wounded in the house of his friends. Eng- 
land, still under the tyranny of Laud and Straf- 
ford, seemed less hostile, and thither he soon 
sailed. Thus, as Mr. Adams feelingly declares, 
^' Massachusetts missed a great destiny, — and 
missed it narrowly, though willfully. It, ' like 
the base Judean, threw the pearl away, richer 
than all his tribe.' " 

So ended in defeat, in heart burnings and perse- 
cutions, those aspirations for larger liberty which 
in this New World should have had serene and 
continuously higher fulfillment. But to the 
sons and residents of old Braintree and Quincy 
it is matter for congratulation that the region 
comprised in their limits was the chosen scene 
for the first heroic attempt to realize the freedom 



38 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

which lay implicitly in the motives of the " first 
emigrants ; " that a distinction it thus early ac- 
quired as the meeting place of the choice spirits 
who in fullest measure embodied the free in- 
tellectual activity of New England Puritanism. 
They were overwhelmed, cruelly despoiled, dis- 
persed in bitterest winter weather, — some north 
to the Piscataqua in New Hampshire, some south 
to the island of the Narragansetts. 

Their liberal ideas, however, rooted in many 
souls, remained and bore fruit. The church 
which in 1639 gathered together the remnant of 
Wheelwright's " Chapel of Ease," reinforced with 
later settlers, exhibited from the beginning the 
characteristics of independence and open-minded- 
ness. It is the church of the Adamses and of the 
Quincys, and of the Hancocks (father and son). 
As early as 1750 the liberalism of it is self-con- 
scious and aggressive. The Rev. Lemuel Briant, 
brilliant, incisive, progressive, drew down upon 
himself — as did his famous predecessor, minister 
Wheelwright — the active opposition of the ultra- 
conservatives. " Had he lived, he might have held 
his ground, and succeeded in advancing by one 
long stride the tardy progress of liberal Chris- 
tianity in Massachusetts." He neglected to teach 
the children of his parish the catechism, prefer- 
ring plain Scripture; he was guilty, said his 
opponents, of " the absurdity and blasphemy 
of substituting the personal righteousness of 



LIBERTY CHECKED 39 

men in the room of the surety-righteousness of 
Christ ; '^ he praised moral virtue ; he protested 
against such interpretation of the Bible as 
affronted human reason. For this he was called 
" Socinian " and " Arminian," and a council of 
sister churches was summoned to try him. With 
an independence almost unheard of, he slighted 
the council and would not go near it. But as it 
declared there existed grounds for the complaints 
against him, a committee of his own church was 
appointed to consider the matter. Colonel John 
Quincy was at the head of this committee, and it 
reported a series of resolutions which may fairly 
be regarded as remarkable for the times. They 
were adopted by almost the entire church. In 
these resolutions the people defended their pas- 
tor's use of " pure Scripture " instead of the 
catechism, and they honored the right of private 
judgment, commending " Mr. Briant for the 
pains he took to promote a free and impartial 
examination into all articles of our holy reHgion, 
so that all may judge even of themselves what 
is right." 

Naturally such a community with such a church 
became the cradle of American Independence. 
John Adams, breathing the invigorating air of 
the place, is talking about independence at the 
age of twenty, and is the flame of fire ordained 
at birth to kindle the heart of a continent. And, 
indeed, we might go still farther back and find in 



40 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

the utterance of a Quincy an earlier anticipation 
of this great princij^le. Miss Eliza Susan Quincy 
quotes from a letter of John Wendell, dated 
Portsmouth, N. H.J October 4, 1785, to this effect: 
Edmund Quincy, who died in 1737, on being 
asked " how soon he thought America would be 
dismembered from the mother country, replied 
that if the colony imj)roved in the arts and sci- 
ences for half a century to come as it had for 
the time past, he made no doubt in that time it 
would be accomplished." Held as a speculation, 
a vision, in times of England's indifference to her 
colonies, it was changed to a passion in the hour 
when she oppressed them. John Adams, a month 
before the battle of Lexington, might truthfully 
say, " That there are any who pant after inde- 
pendence is the greatest slander on the colony." 
None " panted " after it, — the issues were too 
serious, the stake too perilous ; but these great 
leaders were familiar with the thought, and when 
endurance ceased to be a virtue they flung it 
out as the battle-cry of their most cherished 
hopes. 

Deep rooted in a noble past was the idea of 
independence, — a view set forth by Christopher 
Pearse Cranch, a descendant of Richard Cranch, 
brother-in-law of John Adams, in a poem which 
he wrote for the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the old First Church : — 



LIBERTY CHECKED 41 

" Our fathers sowed with stern humility, 
But knew not what the harvest was to be. 
More light, they said, would issue from God's book, 
Not knowing 't was the deeper, wiser look 
The soul took of itself that gave them eyes to see. 
From the rough gnarled root they planted here. 
Through storm and sun, through patient hope and fear, 
There grew a fair and ever-spreading tree, 
With roots fast grappling in the granite rocks, 
Unharmed by cold or drought or tempest shocks; 
Fed by the sun and winds and seasons' change, 
It reared its trunk serenely tall and fair, 
Its boughs diverging in the upper air 

Of thought and liberty, 
Loaded with leaves and blossoms rich and strange, 
And promise of a fruitage yet to be 

In the long centuries of futurity." 



IV 

JUDITH AND JOANNA 

At the opening of the quiescent period which 
followed the storm of persecution, Judith, the 
young widow of Edmund Quincy, is " in the 
wilderness " (so runs tradition's phrase, pathetic 
in her case), holding the lands allotted to her 
husband, and occupying the house built by Cod- 
dington. Not immediately upon the departure 
of that exile, however, did she make her home at 
" the Mount." The sorrow of her widowhood 
was fresh upon her ; the children, Judith and 
Edmund, were quite young; and when the es- 
tate jointly owned by herself and Coddington was 
divided she lacked, it seems likely, the means to 
pay for the improvements. Captain John Tyng, 
Boston's wealthiest merchant, was the purchaser 
of the farmhouse and barn and five hundred 
acres of land. Eventually the portion which 
includes Merry-Mount passed by inheritance to 
that daughter of Tyng who married Thomas 
Sheppard, and by her was bequeathed to her 
grandson, John Quincy. It is now owned and 
occupied by Mrs. John Quincy Adams. When 
it was that the home farm on the banks of the 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 43 

brook was acquired by Judith Quincy is uncer- 
tain ; but it is not long before we note that her 
name is used when the south hue near the bury- 
ing ground is bounded, and that the brook is 
changed in name from " Coddington's brook " 
to " Quincy's brook." The date cannot be much 
later than 1640, — the year when " the Mount " 
was incorporated as the town of Braintree, and 
when Henry Adams is confirmed in the occupancy 
of forty acres of land for "ten heads" on Cap- 
tain's Plain. Momentous are these beginnings. 
Farther back in time we may trace the lines of 
the Adamses and the Quincys, but here in the 
new town they made so famous there is a fresh 
start, and through the years that follow, the inter- 
mingling generations of them, responding to the 
highest demands of patriotism and intellectual 
and moral progress, exalt all that is best in social 
life and civil government by an endless " filiation 
of master spirits." 

Judith Quincy, authentic mother of a crescent 
race, and in the dubious day of small things its 
sole counselor, ranks with the best of her kind 
as an earthly providence. For six years she strove 
with the unfailing strength of woman's courage 
and patience to keep a home for her children, and 
now (about 1642), when the elderly Moses Paine 
proposed marriage, she accepted him. He is of 
Braintree, the possessor of many broad acres ; 
but it was only for a little while that his roof 



44 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

sheltered them, and it was the least amount of his 
property that she ever enjoyed. He died in 164:3, 
leaving half his estate to his son Moses, a quarter 
to his daughter Elizabeth (who married the second 
Henry Adams), a quarter to his son Stephen, and 
the remainder to his wife Judith, — to be exact, 
he cut her off with twenty shillings. Thrifty 
were some of those old settlers, and they grudged 
parting with a penny to any but blood rela- 
tions. 

Was it now that Judith and her two children 
made their home in the Coddington house ? This 
seems likely, and a brighter day dawns for them all. 
John Hull, the future mint-master of the colony, 
looking up lands in Braintree, discovers daugh- 
ter Judith, that flower in the wilderness, and 
bears her to his Boston home. Hardly twenty 
years old was she when in 1647 he married her. 
Governor Winthrop performed the ceremony in 
Boston, — a choice company, no doubt, witnessing 
it, and rejoicing in it. But however celebrated, 
it was a quiet affair compared with the memorable 
wedding of their daughter Hannah. Who has 
not heard of it, and been dazzled by the stream 
of new pine-tree shillings which the prosperous 
mint-master poured into the big scales until they 
weighed down his plump daughter? Such was 
the dower she broug-ht to Juds^e Samuel Sew- 
all, her husband. This cherished story of our 
childhood is doubted by some, who marvel that 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 45 

silver enough for the transaction should have 
been stored away by honest John Hull ; but the 
dilisrent calculator finds that the bride's dower 
was really .£500, which in silver would weigh 
exactly one hundred and twenty-five pounds. 
Thus the story and the figure of Hannah are 
both saved. An original touch seems commonly 
to have gone with the benefactions of the genial 
mint-master. For his wife he named the most 
bleak, windy, and surf-buffeted headland between 
Cape Cod and Sandy Hook. Stormy Point Ju- 
dith ! Does the title record a compliment that 
failed? Or was it a distant, a safely distant, 
allusion away off there in the Narragansett 
country, where he had acquired land from the 
savages, to the occasional ebullition of feminin- 
ity warranted once in a while by the offensive 
serenity of the best of husbands? The com- 
pliment theory will have weight with all who 
have not lost faith in masculine consistency, for 
besides being an honest man and captain of the 
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, he 
was a " saint " no less, and his wife was well 
content to walk daily in the light of his halo. 
" This outshines them all," declared Rev. Mr. 
Willard, enumerating his virtues in a funeral 
sermon, " that he was a saint upon earth ; that 
he lived like a saint here, and died the precious 
death of a saint." However, Judith was worthy 
of hun, and she, too, in a quaint obituary, rudely 



46 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

printed, with a black border and epitaph (a copy 
was preserved by Miss E. S. Quincy), received the 
praise of the " elect lady/' — " Mrs. Judith Hull 
of Boston, in New England, Daughter of Mr. 
Edmund Quincey ; late wife of John Hull Esq., 
deceased. A Diligent, Constant, Fruitful Reader 
and Hearer of the Word of God, Rested from her 
Labors, June 22, 1695, being the seventh day of 
the Week, a little before Sun-set, just about the 
time She used to begin the Sabbath. An7io 
^tatis Slice 69." 

Into such a delightful circle Judith the elder, 
the twice widowed, was welcomed. The father of 
the mint-master, Robert Hull, hale and hearty at 
fifty-five, is captivated by his son's mother-in-law, 
who is fair and forty-six, and their marriage is 
duly celebrated. Happily did they live together 
in his Boston home till her death, the 29th of 
March, 1654. Indeed, he took Judith's entire 
family into his capacious affections, and in his 
will he not only provided for his own children, 
but left lands in Braintree to " Son Edmund 
Quincy." 

Judith, with a mother's considerateness, had 
deferred her own happiness till that of her other 
child, Edmund, was secured. His troth was 
plighted to Joanna Hoar, and they were married 
the 26th day of July, 1648. He was only twenty- 
one years of age when this event took place ; 
but the impatient Robert Hull must not be kept 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 47 

waiting too long, and Judith was determined that 
she would see the youthful couple well established 
in the old home before she left it. And now 
with entire freedom of mind she might take this 
step, for Edmund and Joanna were an ideal pair. 
Tall and comely was he, as the men of his race 
have been in every generation since ; mature also 
for his years, made so by ceaseless strife with the 
wilderness. " A man quickly grows old in battle," 
declared the youthful Napoleon. Not less admir- 
able, as one delights to believe, was his bride. 
Indeed, if Joanna was her mother's daughter in 
the essentials of mind and character, her price 
was above rubies. 

The mother of Joanna, herself a Joanna, was 
a true Roman matron, schooled in tribulations, 
unfailing in fortitude, the heroic founder of an 
enduring race. " Great mother " her contempo- 
raries called her, deliberately carving the words 
on the table monument which marks her last 
resting place in the old Quincy burying ground. 
" Take care of Joanna Hoar ! " was the last in- 
junction of the late Judge E. R.Hoar to his friend 
C. F. Adams, the younger. He deeply desired to 
do her honor. He was proud to look up to her as 
the great ancestress of his own race, and of many 
another family distinguished in American history. 
Mr. Adams, who takes pleasure in numbering 
himself with " the tribe of Joanna," writes that 
" she is the common origin of that remarkable 



48 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

progeny in which statesmen, jurists, lawyers, 
orators, poets, story-tellers, and philosophers seem 
to vie with each other in recognized eminence." 
For freedom in religion she fled to these shores. 
Her husband, Charles Hoar, had been sheriff of 
Gloucester, in England, — a man of substance, 
and much regarded. Both were Puritans. It 
was after her husband's death, which occurred in 
1638, that the intrepid wddow, with five children, 
forsook her pleasant Gloucester home with all its 
comforts, and braved the perils of the sea and 
the hardships of the wilderness, to worship God 
according to her conscience. She arrived here 
in 1640, and settled immediately in Brain tree. 
Her daughter Margery within a year married the 
able young minister of the Braintree church, 
Henry Flynt ; John, the eldest son, ancestor of 
Judge E. R. Hoar and his brother, Hon. George 
F. Hoar, removed first to Scituate and then to 
Concord ; and Joanna, as has been related, mar- 
ried Edmund Quincy. 

With another son, Leonard, there are connected 
the dramatis personoi of a notable tragedy. He 
himself is distinguished as the third president of 
Harvard College, and the first of its graduates 
to be thus honored. He was " designated in his 
father's will to be the scholar of the family and 
a teacher in the Church, although by his coming 
to New England he missed the proposed matricu- 
lation at Oxford, yet satisfied fully the spirit of 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 49 

the paternal wish." After graduating from Har- 
vard in the class of 1650 he returned to England, 
where he continued his studies at the English 
Cambridge, receiving a degree. Soon after he 
was presented by Sir Henry Mildmay — one of 
the regicides, then lord of the manor — with the 
benefice of Wanstead, in Essex. For wife he 
married Bridget, the daughter of John Lord 
Lisle and Lady Alicia Lisle. With her he came 
again to New England July 8, 1672, having been 
called thither with a view to settlement over the 
South Church, Boston. But he brought with 
him a letter signed by thirteen dissenting minis- 
ters of London and vicinity commending him as 
a suitable person for the presidency of Harvard, 
then vacant, and, despite one or more formidable 
rivals, he was installed in that office December 
10, 1672, 

Lord Lisle, his wife's father, was president of 
the High Court of Justice appointed for the trial 
of King Charles I., and became Lord Commis- 
sioner of the Great Seal. " He for some reason 
did not sign the death warrant of Charles L, but 
was chosen by Cromwell one of the Committee of 
Seven, who prepared ' a draft of a sentence, with 
a blank for the manner of his death.' " It was 
enough. At the Restoration his was the first 
name in the list of those excepted from the act 
of indemnity. Fleeing from England with a 
price set upon his head, he was tracked by assas- 



50 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

sins, who murdered him at Lausanne, in Switzer- 
land, August 11, 1664. 

The fate of Lady Alicia was even more tragic. 
Twenty years later she was haled before the 
" bloody assize " of the infamous Chief Justice 
Jeffreys, charged with aiding and concealing in 
her dwelling on the day after the battle of Sedge- 
moor Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer, and John 
Hicks, a clergyman, accused of being refugees 
from Monmouth's army. " She declared her- 
self innocent of guilty knowledge, and protested 
against the illegality of her trial, because the 
supposed rebels to whom she had given hospi- 
tality had not been convicted. She was then ad- 
vanced in years, and so feeble that it was said she 
was unable to keep awake during her tedious trial. 
Jeffreys arrogantly refused her the aid of counsel, 
admitted irrelevant testimony, excelled himself in 
violent abuse, and so intimidated the jurors, who 
were disposed to dismiss the charge, that they 
unwillingly at last brought in a verdict of guilty. 
She was hurriedly condemned Ho be burned 
aHve ' the very afternoon of the day of her trial, 
August 28, 1685 ; but owing to the indignant 
protests of the clergy of Winchester, execution 
was postponed for five days, and the sentence 
was ' altered from burning to beheading.' This 
punishment was exacted in the market place of 
Winchester on the appointed day, the implacable 
King James XL refusing a pardon, although it 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 51 

was proved that Lady Lisle had protected many 
cavaliers in distress and that her son John was 
serving in the royal army; and many persons 
of high rank interceded for her, among whom 
was Lord Clarendon, brother-in-law to the king. 
Lady Lisle was connected by marriage with the 
Bond, Whitmore, Churchill, and other families 
of distinction, and her granddaughter married 
Lord James Russell, fifth son of the first Duke 
of Bedford, thus connecting this tragedy with that 
of Lord William Russell, * the martyr of English 
Liberty; " 

The Hon. George F. Hoar in 1892 paid a 
visit to Moyles's Court, the ancient home of the 
Lisles, and made notes, which with the above 
details were wrought into an account of " The 
Hoar Family in America and its English Ances- 
try," by Henry Stedman Nourse. Interest in the 
Lady Alicia is so much deepened by these notes 
that the temptation to quote a few of them is 
not wisely to be resisted : — 

" Saturday, October 22d, Mr. Hoar, with two 
ladies, went from Southampton to Ringwood, 
about twenty miles, and drove thence to Elling- 
ham church, about two miles and a half. The 
church is a small but very beautiful structure of 
stone, with a small wooden belfry. The tomb 
of Lady Alice Lisle is a heavy flat slab of gray 
stone, raised about two or three feet from the 
ground, bearing the following inscription : — 



52 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

" * Here Lies Dame Alicia Lisle 
and her daughter Ann Harf eld 
who dyed the 17th of Feb. 1703-4 
Alicia Lisle Dyed the 
second of Sept. 1685.* 

*' Lady Lisle was carried on horseback by a 
trooper to Winchester. The horse lost a shoe, 
and fell lame ; she insisted that the trooper 
should stop at a smith's and have the shoe re- 
placed, and on his refusing declared that she 
would make an outcry and resistance unless he 
did, saying she could not bear to have the horse 
suffer. The blacksmith at first refused. He 
said he would do nothing to help the carrying 
off Lady Lisle, but she entreated him to do it 
for her sake. She said she should come back 
that way in a few days ; the trooper said, ' Yes, 
you will come back in a few days, but without 
your head.' 

"The body was returned to Moyles's Court 
the day of the execution ; the head was brought 
back a few days after in a basket, and put in at 
the pantry window ; the messenger said that the 
head was sent afterward for greater indignity." 

So, while here in a small frontier settlement, 
the daughter and her people are living peaceful, 
uneventful days, there in old England the father 
is a fugitive, the mother a prisoner, and both 
ultimately suffering the extreme vengeance of a 
Stuart. Among the eight great historical paint- 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 55 

ings by E. M. Ward, R. A., which adorn the 
corridor leading to the House of Commons, the 
third in the series represents Lady Lisle' s arrest 
for relieving the two fugitives from Monmouth's 
defeated army. Strange, is it not, that dwellers 
in a peaceful hamlet in this western world 
should be so intimately related to the chief 
actors in some of those Old World tragedies I 
Tranquillest lives they seem to be living ; no 
word comes down to us revealing the turmoil of 
their hearts, and yet the tardy letters from be- 
yond the hmitless seas burdened their souls with, 
woe upon woe. To him who can look beneath 
the surface, all this and more is visible. The 
New World, too, furnished its measure of dark- 
ness to that shadow of sorrow which falls from 
every son of man who walks in the light of life. 
Leonard Hoar, the Harvard president, aroused 
bitter opposition by espousing, as it is supposed, 
the " Half-way Covenant." This, which suffered 
persons baptized in infancy to become church 
members without formal confession, was the far- 
thest step for the liberals of those days, and 
may indicate his affinity with the tolerant spirit 
of Henry Flynt of Braintree and his fellow 
thinkers. The " sour leven " of advanced ideas 
was still fermenting there. At all events the 
students fell away from the president, and " set 
themselves to Travestie whatever he did and 
saidy and aggravate everything in his Behavior 



54 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

disagreeable to them, with a design to make him 
Odious." They were countenanced by certain per- 
sons who '^made a figure in the neighborhood/' 
with the result that he was forced to resign. 
This so wrought upon Dr. Hoar that, as Cotton 
Mather writes, "his Grief threw him into a 
Consumption whereof he died November 28^ 
1675, in Boston." " A solemn stroke ! " records 
Increase Mather. His remains were interred in 
the burying ground of Braintree, now Quincy, 
where those of his wife and mother were ulti- 
mately laid. 

Bridget, his widow, now about thirty-six years 
old, remained single a year, to a day, when she 
married Hezekiah Usher, a Boston merchant. 
He turned out to be a crotchety, willful sort 
of man, with whom she could not live on any 
endurable terms. So her resolved heart deter- 
mined on a voyage to England, whither, it may 
be, she felt summoned to perform some sacred 
last things in memory of that father so recently 
slain and to comfort her mother. Providential 
was this step ; for when her mother, so cruelly 
treated, needed her most, there she was at hand 
to lavish upon her the tender ministries of love. 
Later, when William and Mary came to the 
throne, she and her sister succeeded in having 
the attainder against her mother reversed. 

Usher had enough good sense to realize his 
loss, and, as Sewall wrote, " goes down the bar- 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 55 

bor with his wife and her daughter and weeps 
at taking leave." Not till her husband's death, 
in 1697, did she return to Boston. Then, 
through the efforts of Judge Sewall and " cousin 
Anna [Joanna] Quinsey we introduce Madam 
Usher to Mr. H. Usher's House and Ground on 
the Common." Here she dwelt till " she de- 
parted this life the 25th of the last month (May, 
1723) being Saturday at about two o'clock in 
the afternoon after about a fortnight's Indispo- 
sition, and according to her express desire was 
Intere'd at Brantry May 30th in the Grave of 
Dr. Leonard Hoar, her first Husband, and her 
younger daughter Tryphena, and the Doct^^- 
Mother and Sisters. The Corps was attended 
about half a mile in the street leading thither- 
ward by the Bearers, being the Honble Wm. 
Dummer, Esqr., Lt. Gov. and Com'd'r in Cheif, 
Sam'l Sewall, Penn Townsend, Edward Brom- 
field, Simeon Stoddard, and Edmund Quincey, 
Esq'rs, and many others, principal Gentlemen 
and Gentlewomen of the Town, Mr. Leonard 
Cotton being the principal Mourner. It pleased 
God to afford us a very comfortable day for the 
Solemnity, wherein the Executors Colo. Quincey 
Mr. Flynt, and others Gen't with several Gentle- 
women of her cheif acquaintance proceeded to 
Braintry on Horse back and in Coaches. The 
distance is very little above ten miles." No 
other lady of the land could have had more 



56 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

respect shown her, and Judge Sewall, who wrote 
this account for Mrs. Bridget Cotton, her daugh- 
ter, in London, says farther, they " gave my wife 
and I gloves." '' Eat at Judge Quincys and 
then we return home." 

And Joanna, the great mother of these and 
other striving souls, what of her all these years ? 
Fortunately she had been spared the pain of 
witnessing the distresses of her children, and of 
being saddened by the violent deaths of her 
connections over sea. She passed away half a 
century before her daughter-in-law, on December 
21, 1661. Uneventful, calm, and full of good 
works we may believe her life to have been in 
this new land. For Leonard, before he returned 
to England after graduating from Harvard, and 
for John, before he removed to Scituate on his 
way to Concord, she made a home in Braintree. 
After that we know not whether she had a home 
of her own. Welcome she would be in the 
home of parson Flynt, who married her daughter 
Margery, or in the Quincy farmhouse, where 
daughter Joanna was the gracious mistress. At 
the parsonage dame Margery's school for " in- 
structing young Gentlewoemen," to say nothing 
of her rapidly increasing family, left scant room 
for long visits, but at the Quincy home there 
would be sufficient accommodations, and, in ad- 
dition, the congenial companionship of Madam 
Judith Quincy Paine. Judith and Joanna to- 




RESIDENCE OF GOV. CODDINGTON, NEWPORT, R. I., 1641. 




FIRST CHURCH FROM OLD BURYING-GROUND 
Hoar tombstones at left 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 57 

gether, abiding under the same roof : is it not a 
conjunction happy enough to have been ordained 
in the scheme of things ! Sisters they in like 
sorrows, and with equal fortitude bearing the 
buffets of the same rude world ; mothers they, 
made one throug^h minofling- lines of children's 
children stretching in crowned lives to the latest 
age. Judith, when she removed to Boston as 
Mistress Hull, may have left Joanna sage coun- 
selor of the young couple in the old home. 
Frequently would she return thither till her 
death, in 1654. The remains of Judith were 
interred in Boston, those of Joanna in Braintree, 
but the thouo^ht of their characters is one in the 
reverential reo^ard of a thousand descendants. 

To this elder Joanna, and some of her more 
notable connections, a monument was erected 
a few years ago in the old burying ground in 
Quincy, by Senator George F. Hoar. From the 
same spot another memorial was dated more 
recently, in which the shade of Joanna is repre- 
sented as addressing this generation. Its nature 
is best described in words taken from an address 
upon the character of Judge E. R. Hoar de- 
livered by Charles F. Adams, the younger, before 
the members of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety, February 14, 1895. " Shortly after my re- 
turn from a trip to Europe, nearly six months 
ago. Judge Hoar drove over to my house in Lin- 
coln one bright September Sunday, and after 



58 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

some pleasant talk drew from his pocket a paper 
which he proceeded to read to me. Dated from 
Quincy, where Joanna Hoar lies buried in the 
ancient graveyard by the side of her son Leonard, 
it was a supposed communication from her, writ- 
ten in the quaint olden style, and addressed to 
Mrs. Agassiz, the president of Radcliffe, convey- 
ing a gift of $5000 to endow a scholarship to 
assist in the education of girls at the college, 
' preference always to be given to natives, or 
daughters of citizens of Concord,' and to bear 
as an endowment the name of ' the Widow 
Joanna Hoar.' 

" Altogether it was a delightful bit of fan- 
ciful correspondence, kindly as well as reveren- 
tially conceived, and most charmingly carried 
out; and our old friend enjoyed it keenly. It 
appealed to his sense of humor. He chose to 
give with an unseen hand, and to build his me- 
morial to his first New England ancestor in his 
own peculiar way." 

QuiNcy, September 12, 1894. 
To Mistress Louis Agassiz, 

President of Radcliffe College, 

Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Honored and Gracious Lady, — This epistle is ad- 
dressed to you from Quincy, because in the part of Brain- 
tree which now bears that name, in the burial place by the 
meeting house, all that was mortal of me was laid to rest 
more than two centuries ago, and the gravestone stands 
which bears my name, and marks the spot where my dust 
reposes. 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 59 

It may cause you surprise to be thus addressed, and that 
the work which you are pursuing with such constancy and 
success is of interest to one who so long ago passed from 
the mortal sight of men. But you may recall that wise 
philosophers have believed and taught that those who have 
striven to do their Lord's will here below do not, when 
transferred to his house on high, thereby become wholly 
regardless of what may befall those who come after them, 
— "wee, haec coelestia spectantesy ista terrestria contem- 
nunt." It is a comforting faith that those who have " gone 
forth weeping, bearing precious seed," shall be permitted 
to see and share the joys of the harvest with their succes- 
sors who gather it. 

I was a contemporary of the pious and bountiful Lady 
Radcliffe, for whom your college is named. My honored 
husband, Charles Hoar, Sheriff of Gloucester in England, 
by his death in 1638, left me a widow with six children. 
We were of the people called by their revilers Puritans, to^ 
whom civil liberty, sound learning, and religion were very 
dear. The times were troublous in England, and the hands 
of princes and prelates were heavy upon God's people. My 
thoughts were turned to the new England where precious 
Mr. John Harvard had just lighted that little candle which 
has since thrown its beams so far, where there seemed a 
providential refuge for those who desired a church without 
a bishop, and a state without a king. 

I did not, therefore, like the worshipful Lady Radcliffe, 
send a contribution in money ; but I came hither myself, 
bringing the five youngest of my children with me, and 
arrived at Braintree in the year 1640. 

From that day Harvard College has been much in my 
mind ; and I humbly trust that my coming has not been 
without some furtherance to its well being. My lamented 
husband in his will directed that our youngest son, Leonard, 
should be " carefuUie kept at Schoole, and when hee is fitt 
for itt to be carefuUie placed at Oxford, and if ye Lord 
shall see fitt, to make him a Minister unto his people." As 



60 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDEXCE BEGAN 

the nearest practicable conformity to this direction, I placed 
him carefully at Harvard College, to such purpose that he 
graduated therefrom in 1650, became a faithful minister to 
God's peojDle, a capable physician to heal their bodily dis- 
eases, and became the third President of the College, and 
the first who was a graduate from it, in 1672. 

My daughters became the wives of the Rev. Henry Flint, 
the minister of Braintree, and Col. Edmund Quincy of the 
same town : and it is recorded that from their descendants 
another President has since been raised up to the College, 
Josiah Quincy (tarn carum caput), and a Professor of Rhe- 
toric and Oratory, John Quincy Adams, who as well as his 
sons and grandsons have given much aid to the College, as 
members of one or the other of its governing boards, beside 
attaining other distinctions less to my present purpose. 

The elder of my three sons who came with me to Amer- 
ica, John Hoar, settled in the extreme western frontier 
town of English settlement in New England, called Con- 
cord : to which that exemplary Christian man, the Rever- 
end Peter Bulkeley, had brought his flock in 1635. In 
Mr. Bulkeley's ponderous theological treatise, called " The 
Gospel Covenant," of which two editions were published in 
London (but whether it be so generally and constantly pe- 
rused and studied at the present day, as it was in my time, 
I know not), — in the preface thereto, he says it was writ- 
ten "at the end of the earth." There my son and his 
posterity have dwelt and multiplied, and the love and ser- 
vice of the College which I should approve have not been 
wholly wanting among them. In so remote a place there 
must be urgent need of instruction, though the report seems 
to be well founded that settlements farther westward have 
since been made, and that some even of my own posterity 
have penetrated the continent to the shores of the Pacific 
Sea. Among the descendants of John Hoar have been that 
worthy Professor John Farrar, whose beautiful face in mar- 
ble is among the precious possessions of the College ; that 
dear and faithful woman who gave the whole of her humble 



JUDITH AND JOANNA 61 

fortune to establish a scholarship therein, Levina Hoar ; 
and others who as Fellows or Overseers have done what 
they could for its prosperity and growth. 

Pardon my prolixity, but the story I have told is but a 
prelude to my request of your kindness. There is no 
authentic mode in which departed souls can impart their 
wishes to those who succeed them in this world but these, 
the record or memory of their thoughts and deeds, while 
on earth ; or the reappearance of their qualities of mind 
and character in their lineal descendants. 

In this first year of Radcliffe College, — when so far as 
seems practicable and wise, the advantages which our dear 
Harvard CoUege, " the defiance of the Puritan to the sav- 
age and the wilderness," has so long bestowed upon her 
sons, are through your means to be shared by the sisters 
and daughters of our people, — if it should so befall that 
funds for a scholarship to assist in the education of girls at 
Radcliffe College, who need assistance, with preference al- 
ways to be given to natives, or daughters of citizens of Con- 
cord, Massachusetts, should be placed in the hands of your 
Treasurer, you might well suppose that memory of me had 
induced some of my descendants to spare so much from 
their necessities for such a modest memorial : and I would 
humbly ask that the scholarsliip may bear the name of 

The Widow Joanna Hoar. 

And may God estabUsh the good work you have in charge ! 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE, 
JOHN ADAMS 

It was in the year 1640 — just about the time 
Mistress Judith Quincy removed from Boston 
" into the wilderness '' of Brain tree— that Henry 
Adams was confirmed in the occupation of the 
forty acres " for ten heads " in the same settle- 
ment, by grant of the town of Boston. The 
Adams family have never lacked heads, whether 
one regards quantity or quality; and now, in 
robustness of body and brain and abundant pro- 
geny, was founded this other line of true New 
Enofland men and women, to which centuries are 
as years, and which in every age of America's 
history has signally advanced its high destiny. 
This first Henry was in the newly incorporated 
township a man of mark, — its first brewer (an 
important ofiice among Englishmen brought up 
on the nut-brown ale), and also first clerk and 
clerk of the writs. All this would go to show 
that in 1640 he was no recent settler, but a 
rooted and firmly established inhabitant. The 
when and whence of his arrival, however, are 
both in dispute. President John Adams, who 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 63 

should know, had the following incised on a 
tomb he erected in 1817 to his ancestors : " In 
memory of Henry Adams, who took his flight 
from the Dragon persecution in Devonshire, in 
England, and alighted with eight sons near Mount 
Wollaston." As nowhere else is there record of 
" the Dragon persecution," it is surmised that 
^^ the Dragon of persecution " is the original 
tradition. Another descendant in these later 
days, the Rev. H. F. Fairbanks, favoj-s the flight 
from Devonshire, because the name of Henry 
Adams has been for two centuries or so on an 
" ancient parchment roll " which connects him 
with a distinguished house of that region. No 
less is it attempted to show than " that Henry 
Adams was a descendant of Lord ap Adam and 
his wife Elizabeth de Gournai, who lived in the 
latter part of the thirteenth and early part of 
the fourteenth century, and that through Eliza- 
beth de Gournai he was descended from Matilda 
and William the Conqueror, and through Matilda 
from the Counts of Flanders on the one side, be- 
ing derived from the Capetian kings of France, 
and on the other side from Charlemagne, the 
great emperor of the West." 

Little did John Adams know of this, and as 
little would he have cared for it. Writing to 
Miss Hannah Adams, the historian, who referred 
to the " humble obscurity " of their common 
origin, he vigorously declared that, could " I ever 



64 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

suppose that family pride were any way excusable, 
I should think a descent from a line of virtu- 
ous, independent New England farmers for a 
hundred years was a better foundation for it 
than a descent through royal or noble scoundrels 
ever since the flood." An eternal verity! — then 
cherished chiefly in Puritan circles, and heard in 
the prescient utterance of a Cromwell, a Milton, 
a President of pure democracy, but now an illus- 
trious truism the world over. Numerous in the 
colonies were these " nobles by the right of an 
earlier creation." A better population in phys- 
ical soundness, purity of life, intelligence, and 
high human aims had never before been brought 
together. Lafayette, on his farewell visit to these 
shores, remarked, in pleased surprise, that the 
immense crowds which greeted him in the streets 
of towns and cities seemed like a picked popula- 
tion out of the whole human race. " Seems ! " 
Monsieur le Marquis ? " Nay, we know not 
seems ! " They were in truth a selected peo- 
ple. In their uneventful days they lived simplest 
lives, in kindly, honest brotherhood, independent, 
industrious, sincerely trying to do the Lord's will 
as they understood it ; and when the great hour 
arrived which summoned them to show what of 
valor and truth was in them, the test was met 
with prompt and natural evolution of latencies 
into the white flash and flame of patriotic daring 
and transcendent wisdom. From the farm and 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 65 

the shop, with scarce a transformation, came 
heroes, captains, statesmen of renown, and women 
instinct with miraculous wit and devotion, who 
took their preordained places, outranking the 
best the courts and cabinets of the nations might 
produce. 

Such were the people from whom John Adams 
sprang. In every fibre of his strong, rugged, and 
original character, he was a typical man of the 
free common people of the best New England 
towns, — a genuine son of the Puritan, fearing 
God, and knowing no other fear ; a right seed of 
the " sifted grain " planted here in the New World 
to make a new and more puissant nation. The 
elements which came so conspicuously to the sur- 
face in him were latent in his forefathers, and 
have been strenuously manifested in many an 
Adams since. They are Puritans all, clear and 
direct in character, with not a trace of devious- 
ness, relying upon principle, and not at all upon 
human dexterity, and never feeling at home un- 
less their feet are upon the solid and eternal 
verities. So fixed, they rather enjoy defying the 
world of the shifty and the unstable. 

"Come one, come all; this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I." 

Another theory with regard to the arrival of 
Henry Adams in this country is that he was of 
the devoted company of that renowned minister, 
the Rev. Thomas Hooker, which, fleeing from 



66 AVHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Braintree in Essex County, England, arrived here 
in the summer of 1632, and began " to sit down " 
at " the Mount." While actively preparing for 
the coming of their pastor and others of the 
brethren, they were ordered by the General Court 
to remove to Newtown, now Cambridge. All did 
not remove. Enough, indeed, remained to influ- 
ence the settlers at a later date to change the 
name of " the Mount," when it was incorporated 
as a town, to that of their dear old home in Eng- 
land, Braintree. If Henry Adams was num- 
bered with this remnant, his word and that of 
the four of his eight sons who were of age at 
that time would have been potent in the naming. 
It was a vigorous and ambitious family. Four, 
at least, won military titles, and one came to be a 
deacon. When in 1646 the father died, most of 
the sons sought on the frontier larger fields to 
plough and plant, and went to Concord and Med- 
field and other distant towns. Of interest is it 
to note that Lieutenant Henry Adams, the eldest 
son, married before his removal Elizabeth Paine, 
daughter of that Moses Paine who in 1643 mar- 
ried Judith Quincy. Thus early in the history 
of these two families did they come into relation- 
ship. 

Joseph, the seventh son of the original Henry, 
remained on the farm. He was born in England 
in 1626. It is through him and his son Joseph 
that the family tree of the Adamses came to its 



% 

THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 67 

finest enlorescence. No inconsiderable man was 
the elder Joseph, — farmer, brewer for the town, 
selectman, and father of twelve children. The 
mother of the children was Abigail Baxter, of 
good stock too; and when her son Joseph mar- 
ried he honored brilliantly the Adams instinct 
for wiving superior women, thus early devel- 
oped, and took to his heart and home Hannah 
Bass, daughter of sturdy John Bass of Brain- 
tree and Ruth Alden of the poetic Priscilla 
lineage. Thus through solid, intelligent, God- 
fearing men and women the race ascended to 
John, the deacon, born in 1691, son of the sec- 
ond Joseph. " He was beloved, esteemed, and 
revered by all who knew him." No formal and 
feckless deacon he, but a manly and militant 
one, made lieutenant in the militia, and serving 
the town as selectman for many years, '' almost 
all the business of the town being managed by 
him." Seven children were born to him. The 
eldest of them, whom he named John, needed only 
to be sent to college to start him in a career 
which ended in the Presidency. " If my grand- 
father himself," wrote John Quincy Adams, 
" had received the same education, he would have 
been distinguished either as a clergyman or as a 
lawyer." 

The house in which John Adams was born is 
as typical of its Idnd as were its inhabitants of 
their kind. It is the plain, square, honest block 



68 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

of a house, widened by a lean-to, and scarcely 
two stories high, commonly built by the farmers 
of the period. Such are still to be seen throughout 
New England, gleaming white under the cathedral 
elms. Homely, are they ? Yes ; but like their com- 
panions, the huge granite boulder and the outcrop- 
ping chif, they fit harmoniously into the rugged 
landscape. The Adams homestead, built in 1681, 
was adopted at once by inclusive Nature and 
woven into the even texture of her scenery. In 
front of it ran the old Plymouth highway, and 
behind and on both sides stretched away the wide 
fields of the farm, picturesquely sprinkled with 
orchard trees and occasional pines and elms. The 
majestic sweep of the forest-covered slopes of 
Penn's Hill, near at hand, and the more distant 
terraces of the Blue Hills bounded the vision. 
Now, among the modern cottages of a thriving 
town, it seems humble enough and out of place, 
with only the neighboring house — in which John 
Quincy Adams was born, and the homestead of 
the solid old Field family — to keep it in coun- 
tenance. 

But in human interest what other habitation 
in all this broad land may surpass it ? Here is 
the real Cradle of American Independence, 
— here, and in the house adjoining, where John 
and Abigail Adams began their married life, and 
in which their illustrious son came into being. 
In the simpHcity of these surroundings great 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 69 

souls, to use the words of Milton, were " inflamed 
with the study of learning and the admiration of 
virtue, stirred with the high hopes of living to be 
brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and 
famous to all ages." It is one of the shrines of 
this great republic. The home in which Wash- 
ington was born was destroyed by fire when he 
was three years of age. The frail cabin in which 
Lincoln first saw the light soon crumbled to dust. 
But here stands the veritable roof -tree under 
which was ushered into being the earhest and 
strongest advocate of independence, — the leader 
whose clear intelligence was paramount in shaping 
our free institutions, the founder of a line of 
statesmen, legislators, diplomats, historians, whose 
patriotism is a passion, and whose integrity is 
like the granite of their native hills. Piously is 
the ancient building cared for by the Adams 
Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution, and 
its original appointments preserved for the sight 
of reverent pilgrims. 

It was on the 19th of October, 1735, that the 
home of the Adamses was blessed with the son 
who brouo'ht it fame. Another home but a mile 
away, the home of Parson Hancock, was similarly 
blessed on the 12th of January, 1737, by the 
birth of another John. To the Rev. Mr. Han- 
cock, with no eyes to look into the future, the 
two Johns are but two boys making happy two 
households, and brief is his record of baptism, — 



70 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

" John, son of John Adams, October 26th, 1735 ; " 
" John Hancock, my son, January 16th, 1737." 
But the son of the deacon and the son of the 
minister were to be joined in what momentous 
transformations ! As boys they played together, 
perhaps went to the same school, and of a Sunday 
sat, the one in the minister's pew and the other 
in the deacon's, at either side of the pulpit, and 
furtively pitied each other as the sermon length- 
ened. When the Rev. Mr. Hancock died, in 
1744, his son was adopted by the rich Thomas 
Hancock of Boston, brother of the minister. But 
later John Adams the lawyer aided with his 
legal talent John Hancock the merchant, and 
together they wrought for liberty in the Provin- 
cial Congress and in the wider field of the Con- 
tinental Congress. 

It was a daring project for the parents of John 
Adams in their straitened circumstances to send 
him to college ; but he was their first-born, and 
the promise of attaining high things was in him. 
They cherished the hope that he would become 
a minister, — " wag his pow in a poopit," — 
fond dream of Puritan households. What an 
" Orson of parsons " the robust and explosive 
John Adams would have made ! Fortunately 
for the peace of a church, which, to quote 
his own words, wanted in a parson mainly 
" stupidity, irresistible grace, and original sin," 
he developed liberal opinions on some disputed 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 71 

points in divinity. In this crisis of his fate, upon 
graduating from Harvard, he took to teaching 
for subsistence, and to the law for vocation. Now, 
in the name of all the gods at once, let us be 
thankful that this invincible Samson was preserved 
by a happy foreordination for the creation of a 
new nation, and not for the shaking of pillars in 
the temple of the Philistines ! In this very year 
of his decision we find his prescient patriotism 
surmising that the seat of empire may be trans- 
ferred to America ; " that it may be easy to 
obtain mastery of the seas, and then the united 
force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. 
The only way to keep us from setting up for our- 
selves is to disunite us." 

From teaching and law study in Worcester he 
returned in 1758 to Braintree. " Rose at sun- 
rise," reads a sample record in his diary, " un- 
pitched a load of hay, and translated two more 
leaves of Justinian." He is socially inclined, and 
with farm chores and study mingles chat and tea 
with neighbors, and smokes a friendly pipe with 
his cousin. Dr. Savil, next door. He even amuses 
himself and displays his Latinity by reading Ovid's 
" Art of Love " to the doctor's wife as he leans 
over the fence. He frequents Parson Wibird's 
bachelor quarters in the Spear house, still stand- 
ing on Canal Street, and exhausts the contents 
of that gentleman's mind, " stuffed Tvith remarks 
and stories of human virtues and vices, wisdom 



72 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

and folly." But above all, the most stimulating 
conferences on liberty, and at the same time the 
most distracting encounter of wits, is to be found 
in the home of Josiah Quincy, in the Hancock 
parsonage, and in the Quincy mansion, occupied 
by Edmund Quincy. There, with the Quincys 
and Jonathan Sewall and John Hancock and 
many another known to fame, he talks politics, 
law, literature, plays cards, flirts a bit, and de- 
means himself generally in a quite human fashion. 
He is ambitious to excel, and bears his part with 
such exuberant energy as to be plagued after- 
ward with comj)unctious visitings of conscience. 
" I have not conversed enough with the world," 
he records, " to behave rightly. I talk to Paine 
about Greek, — that makes him laugh. I talk 
to Sam Quincy about resolution and being a great 
man, and study and improving time, — which 
makes him laugh. I talk to Ned [Quincy] about 
the folly of affecting to be a heretic, — which 
makes him mad. I talk to Hannah and Esther 
about the folly of love, about despising it, about 
being above it, pretend to be insensible of tender 
passions, — which makes them laugh." 

He was not really cynical with regard to the 
tender passions ; he was only smitten. The five 
lovely daughters of Judge Edmund Quincy, and 
the adorable Hannah, daughter of Colonel Josiah 
Quincy, aroused in him the unutterable, not to 
be awkwardly laughed away. Now shy, and now 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 73 

boisterous, as is the way of a young man charmed 
by a maid, he first fluttered around Esther, and 
then fell a victim to the enchantments of Hannah. 
To her he was about to propose — the words were 
trembling upon his lips — when he was inter- 
rupted by the fateful intrusion of a merry party 
from the mansion. He drew back as from an 
abyss which might have swallowed ambition, 
study, promotion, patriotism. His youth and 
penniless condition w^ere responsible for this revul- 
sion of f eehng. Now in strenuous study he seeks 
an antidote to cleanse his bosom of that perilous 
stufP, — " no girl, no gun, no cards, no flutes, no 
violins, no dress, no tobacco, no laziness." 

John Adams took himself too seriously, as is 
the defect of the Puritan temper. He was really 
devouring books, besides doing a man's work, 
almost, on the farm. About this time, 1761, his 
father died, and the direction of affairs fell to 
him as the eldest son. Now, also, he entered 
upon his first performance of public duties. 
There prevailed in his town a sort of compulsory 
municipal service which has some significance in 
the light thrown back upon it by the disinter- 
ested attitude of generations of the Adamses. 
This service now summoned John Adams to bear 
his part. " In March," he says in his diary, 
" when I had no suspicion, I heard my name 
pronounced [at town meeting] in a nomination 
of surveyor of highways. I was very wroth be- 



74 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

cause I knew no better, but said nothing. My 
friend, Dr. Savil, came to me and told me that 
he had nominated me to prevent me from being 
nominated as a constable. ' For/ said the doctor, 
' they make it a rule to compel every man to serve 
either as constable or surveyor, or to pay a fine.' 
Accordingly, I went to ploughing and ditching 
. . . and building an entire new bridge of stone be- 
low Dr. Miller." Charles F. Adams, the younger, 
comments with satisfaction upon this method, 
and declares that the community has a right to 
the services of its best men, " the best in a prac- 
tical sense, and that its claim should be enforced, 
when public opinion does not suffice, by other 
means." This, he thinks, would be one factor 
in solving the great problems connected with the 
government of all towns and cities. However 
this may be, the early Quincy method and the 
words of Mr. Adams throw light upon a princi- 
ple the Adamses have invariably followed. They 
have never sought public office, and they have 
never refused public service, however humble. 
John Adams was not only road surveyor but 
selectman. John Quincy Adams, after he had 
been President, did not hesitate to accept the com- 
paratively humble position of representative to 
Congress, declaring that in his opinion " an ex- 
President would not be degraded by serving as a 
selectman of his town if elected thereto by the 
people." And his son, Charles Francis Adams, 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 75 

our great minister to England during the civil 
war, when approached by his fellow townsmen 
who wished him to serve on the school board or 
in the bank, responded simply, " I am very busy 
with my literary work, but if my fellow citizens 
think I can serve them in that capacity I will ac- 
cept the office." It is the chivalry of citizenship, 
the fulfillment of the royal motto " I serve ; " 
honored also by the late John Quincy Adams, who 
for nearly a score of years officiated as moder- 
ator of the town meeting, and by the present 
Charles Francis Adams, who as a member of the 
school committee, did so much to introduce the 
improvements known as the " Quincy system." 

But to return to John Adams : what besides 
bridge building is he doing in these formative 
days ? Most important event, — he is so taken 
with the superb Abigail that neither studies nor 
patriotic visions appear for a moment as rivals. 
" Would you know how first he met her? " No 
such homely and explicit answer can be given as 
the one humorously set down by Thackeray in his 
poem on Werter and Charlotte. She was the 
daughter of the Rev. William Smith, minister of 
the church in the neighboring town of Weymouth, 
and he may have seen her first in the solemn 
setting of the parson's pew. The road between 
the towns was well trodden, and a companion of 
John Adams — Mr. Richard Cranch, no less — 
married her elder sister Mary in this very year. 



76 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

But one is inclined to the opinion that acquaint- 
ance began in the animated circles of the Quincy 
mansion. Abigail was connected with the Quin- 
cys by marriage. Her grandmother was Mrs. 
John Quincy, who lived on the farm at Mount 
Wollaston, which adjoined that of Judge Ed- 
mund Quincy on the seaward side. Here she 
was a frequent visitor. Indeed, much of all she 
knew was taught her by her grandmother. " Her 
excellent lessons," wrote Abigail later, "made a 
more durable impression on my mind than those 
which I received from my own parents." Of 
course she would be often at the mansion, at- 
tracted there by its life and gayety ; and there, 
still cherishing his heroics against marriage, hus- 
tling, and chat, John Adams met her and sur- 
rendered unconditionally. 

John and Abigail on the 25th of October, 1764, 
were married. In several aspects it was a great 
triumph for the young lawyer. His profession 
had told against him, for one thing. According 
to Puritan ethics it was an unnecessary, an un- 
sanctified calling, almost ; fuller of quirks to set 
rogues free than of rules to effect their punish- 
ment. Consequently, among the officious of the 
Weymouth parish there were dissatisfied mur- 
murings. The facetious parson Smith was quick 
to improve the occasion with a " timely " sermon. 
Upon the marriage of his eldest daughter to 
Richard Cranch he had preached upon the text, 




ABIGAIL ADAMS 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 77 

" And Mary hath chosen that good part, vrhich 
shall not be taken away from her." Now, imme- 
diately after the marriage of Abigail, he surpassed 
himself with a deliverance from the text, " For 
John . . . came neither eatinof bread nor drink- 
ing wine ; and ye say, He hath a devil." 

With this paternal absolution the young couple 
began their married life in the home they had 
been preparing. It was the house close to the 
one in which John was born. By what wealth 
of heart's devotion, patriotic fervor, noble self- 
sacrifice, was that home consecrated ! Abigail 
brought to it a spirit as clear and ardent as that 
which burned in the breast of John, the " white 
fire" of his flaming zeal for Hberty and the rights 
of man. He was educated far beyond her, for it 
was the " fashion to ridicule female learning," 
and she was never sent to school ; but a New 
England home, the Bible and Shakespeare were 
enough to draw out and enrich the rare powers 
with which she was originally endowed, and to 
make her one of the greatest women of the age, 
a helpmeet for one of its greatest men. 

In the high thinking of that home, the idea 
of independence, floating already in the free spirit 
of the first settlers, was clearly formed and ex- 
plicitly uttered. So, when the fateful moment 
struck, the man was there to fling the creative 
word among the glowing souls of a people, and, 
like the central element which originates a sun, 



78 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

it drew all " celestial ardours " to itself, and a 
new luminary among the galaxy of nations rolled 
into order and orbit. 

Onward from his twentieth year he never wa- 
vered in his conviction that his country was des- 
tined to be free and independent. His was that 
large view of human events, that vision of things 
to come, which belongs to the morally sagacious. 
How quick he is to detect in any true word, or 
aspiration of a genuine man, the heralding of the 
new day ! While yet a student of law, in the 
year 1761, he hangs upon the eloquence of James 
Otis as he argues against the " Writs of Assist- 
ance " and takes those notes of the address which 
are the best which have been handed down to this 
generation. His sympathetic conclusions even 
then outran the thoughts of the elder patriot. 
Recalling his impressions, fifty years later, he 
wrote, " Then and there was the first scene of the 
first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of 
Great Britain. Then and there the child Inde- 
pendence was born." Not a word of independ- 
ence, however, appears in Otis's fervent denun- 
ciation of that " kind of power, the exercise of 
which, in former periods of English history, cost 
one king of England his head, and another his 
throne." It is a plea for " English liberty " 
against a misguided parliament, and it is plain 
that John Adams fluncj into that moulten torrent 
the glowing hopes of his own ardent soul. 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 79 

Fast upon the heels of this act of tyranny came 
a second, "the Stamp Act." In the thrill of 
indignant resentment which possessed the colo- 
nists when they heard of the passage of the act, 
John Adams came to the front. " I drew up a 
petition to the selectmen of Braintree/' he wrote 
in his diary, " and procured it to be signed by a 
number of the respectable inhabitants, to call a 
meeting of the town to instruct their representa- 
tives in relation to the stamps." Boston, in May, 
1764, even before the act had been voted by 
parHament, had denied, in resolutions drawn up 
by Samuel Adams, the right of parHament to tax 
the colonies without their consent. This was 
the first dehberate protest. Now, in 1765, with 
that protest unheeded, backed though it was by 
other provinces, the people arrayed themselves 
so menacingly against the act that parliament 
was forced to recede. From Virginia's House of 
Burgesses, in May, rang through the land Patrick 
Henry's impassioned " if-this-be-treason " speech. 
Massachusetts called for a general Congress, and 
mobs everywhere terrorized the officials appointed 
to distribute the stamps. The Braintree meet- 
ing was held on the 24:th of September, Nor- 
ton Quincy acting as moderator. John Adams 
modestly records, " I prepared a draught of in- 
structions at home, and carried them with me. 
The cause of the meeting was explained at some 
length, and the state and danger of the country 



80 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

pointed out ; a committee was appointed to pre- 
pare instructions, of which I was nominated as 
one. My draught was unanimously adopted with- 
out amendment, reported to the town, and ac- 
cepted without a dissenting voice. . . . They 
rang through the state and were adopted in so 
many words ... by forty towns, as instructions 
to their representatives." That " explanation of 
the cause at some length," what was it but the 
earliest of those clear, forceful and statesmanhke 
utterances which made him the " Colossus " of 
the debates on Independence ? To Patrick Henry 
ten years later he wrote, " I know of none so com- 
petent to the task (of framing a constitution for 
Virginia) as the author of the first Vu'ginia reso- 
lutions against the Stamp Act, who will have the 
glory with posterity of beginning and conclud- 
ing this great revolution." Perhaps the Virginia 
orator would have spoken as generously of John 
Adams could he have heard the echoes of his ad- 
dress in Braintree town meeting. Both had a 
" just sense of our rights and liberties," and both 
gave wings to that battle-cry of the Revolution, 
" No taxation without representation." On May 
I6th, 1766, the glorious news was announced in 
Boston that a vessel belonging to John Hancock 
had brought the tidings that the Stamp Act had 
been repealed. 

Into " atmospheric existence " thus highly 
charged with moral and patriotic electricity a son 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 81 

was born July 11, 1767. The next day, as 
was then the practice, parson Wibird was called 
in, and the child was baptized. Grandmother 
Smith was there, and she requested that he should 
be named after her father, the aged John Quincy, 
who then lay dying in his home at Mount Wollas- 
ton. Long afterwards President John Quincy 
Adams wrote as follows of this transaction : " It 
was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was 
the name of one passing from earth to immor- 
tality. These have been among the strongest 
links of my attachment to the name of Quincy, 
and have been to me through life a perpetual 
admonition to do nothing unworthy of it." 

Elevated was life in this " little hut," but it 
was real, genuine, beautifully domestic. The 
scene of it, visible there now to any pious pilgrim, 
and reverently preserved in many of its antique 
appointments by the Quincy Historical Society, 
assists the imagination to realize its noble sim- 
plicity. The dining-room or general living room, 
with its wide open fireplace, is where the young 
couple would most often pass their evenings, and 
in winter would very likely occupy in measureless 
content a single settle, roasting on one side and 
freezing on the other. The kitchen, full of 
cheerful bustle, and fragrant as the spice isles, 
how it would draw the children as they grew up, 
the little John Quincy among them ! Here they 
could be near mother, and watch her with absorb- 



82 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

ing attention as she superintended the cooking, 
now hanging pots of savory meats on the crane, 
and now drawing from the cavernous depths of 
the brick oven the pies and baked beans and In- 
dian puddings and other delicacies of those days. 
We can more easily imagine the home scene when 
we read these words written by Mrs. Adams to 
her husband : " Our son is much better than 
when you left home, and our daughter rocks him 
to sleep with the song of ' Come papa, come home 
to brother Johnnie.' " " Johnnie ! " is the dig- 
nified President and " old man eloquent " that 
is to be. 

John Adams was not permitted to enjoy without 
interruption the dear delights of home in " still, 
calm, happy Braintree." To extend his legal 
practice he removed his family to Boston. There, 
in that centre of revolutionary agitations, he min- 
gled with Samuel Adams, and Otis, and Josiah 
Quincy, Jr., and Dr. Warren, and other kindred 
spirits ; there he spent evenings with the Sons of 
Liberty in Thomas Dawes's hall, near the Liberty 
Tree ; there the British troops, put into the town 
to overawe it, drilled before his house ; and there, 
about nine o'clock of the 5th of March, 1770, 
he was alarmed by the ringing of bells, and hurry- 
ins: out was informed that the British soldiers had 
fired on the inhabitants, and had killed some and 
wounded others, near the town house. This was 
the " Boston Massacre," and during the night 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 83 

Captain Preston and his soldiers were arrested. 
" The next morning, I think it was/' writes John 
Adams, " sitting in my office near the steps of 
the town house stairs, Mr. Forrest came in, who 
was then called the Irish Infant. With tears 
streaming from his eyes he said, ' I am come 
with a very solemn message from a very unfortu- 
nate man. Captain Preston, in prison. He wishes 
for counsel, and can get none. I have waited on 
Mr. Quincy, who says he will engage if you will 
give him your assistance.' I had no hesitation in 
answermg that counsel ought to be the very last 
thing an accused person should want in a free 
country." Why John Adams, a patriot, should 
render this service to the oppressors of his peo- 
ple, amazed many of his fellow citizens ; but he 
himself, speaking of it later, declared it to be 
" one of the most gallant, manly, and disinter- 
ested actions of my whole life." 

To the great detriment of both his health and 
his law practice he was carried deeper and deeper 
into the whirl of patriotic agitation. The coming 
storm now lowered darkly, and was visible enough 
in the imposition of new taxes, in assaults upon 
the independence of the judiciary, in the Boston 
Tea Party, and the vengeful Port Bill. Antici- 
pating the worst, John Adams moved his family 
back to Braintree. How much he longed to 
abide with them in peace, if that might be, is 
expressed in his diary : " I should have thought 



84 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

myself tbe happiest man in the world if I could 
have retired to my little hut and forty acres, which 
my father left me in Braintree, and lived on po- 
tatoes and sea-weed the rest of my life. But I 
had taken a part, I had adopted a system, I had 
encouraged my fellow citizens, and I could not 
abandon them in conscience and in honor." 

That system was the Independence of his coun- 
try, now more clearly held as inevitable, but at 
that time a thought too daring to be accepted by 
many. His cousin, Samuel Adams, had come to 
a like conclusion soon after 1768 ; besides him, 
however, few or none went with John Adams. 
These two were joined in pleading that the courts 
be opened, when Governor Hutchinson closed 
them for not complying with the Stamp Act. 
They had then employed the most radical argu- 
ments, contending that neither taxes nor laws 
should be imposed upon freemen by a legisla- 
ture in which they were not represented. Again 
they were united in a matter of vital importance : 
in 1774 they with two others were appointed 
delegates by the Massachusetts Assembly to the 
First Continental Congress, to be held at Phila- 
delphia. Of one mind with regard to the attitude 
the country must take eventually, they soon 
learned how far in advance they were of the 
ideas commonly held. Delegates paled at the 
word Independence. Regiments of British troops 
were here in America, and more were coming, to 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 85 

enforce submission to unjust laws, yet the idea 
of separation must not be mentioned. This very 
Congress of protest, in an address to the king, 
used the words, " Your royal authority over us 
and our connection with Great Britain, we shall 
always carefully and zealously endeavor to sup- 
port and maintain." The Adamses were as yet 
powerless to advance their great idea. How- 
ever, they had only to abide their time ; coming 
events were to be their great allies. 

Abigail Adams, left in the Braintree home, is 
on "the firing line," a witness of all the occur- 
rences which, in so tragic a manner, were to co- 
operate with her husband. She is aflame with 
indignation at the oft-repeated tales of the inso- 
lence of Gage's troops in Boston ; she is the 
inspiration of her patriot neighbors ; she is in 
correspondence with Warren and other leaders. 
When the storm is let loose in the whirlwind 
passion of Lexington and Concord, her home 
is the centre of excitement. The minute-men 
stream along the highway to invest Boston ; the 
militia are drilling on the common by the meeting- 
house ; the shores are guarded. One morning, 
on the appearance of three sloops and a cutter, 
"the people come flocking this way, every wo- 
man and child driven off from below my father's, 
my father's family flying." Still later she writes, 
" My house is in confusion ; soldiers coming in 
for lodging, for breakfast, for supper, for drink. 



86 WHERE AMERICAN mDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

. . . Sometimes refugees from Boston, tired and 
fatigued, seek an asylum for a day, a night, a 
week." 

Mr. Adams, now attending the Second Congress, 
is anxious, and counsels her if real danger threat- 
ens, to fly to the woods with the children. She is 
" distressed but not dismayed." The excitement 
swells and rises towering to the 17th of June, 
1775, when, as Mrs. Adams writes, " the day, 
perhaps the decisive day, is come on which the 
fate of America depends." At early dawn the 
town is awakened by the heavy cannonading of 
the British ships, firing against the breastworks 
thrown up on Bunker Hill. " The constant roar 
of the cannon is so distressing we cannot eat, 
drink or sleep." Taking with her the little John 
Quincy, now about eight years old, she climbs 
the neighboring Penn's Hill, and looks toward 
Boston. " It was a clear June day," writes the 
younger C. F. Adams, " and across the blue bay 
they saw against the horizon the dense, black 
column of smoke which rolled away from the 
burninof houses of Charlestown. Over the crest 
of the distant hill hung the white clouds which 
told of the battle going on beneath the smoke. 
There was, withal, something quite dramatic in 
the scene ; but, as the two sat there, silent and 
trembling, the child's hand clasped in that of the 
mother, thinking now of what was taking place 
before their eyes, and now of the husband and 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 87 

father so far away at the Congress, they Httle 
dreamed of the great future for him and for the 
boy, to be surely worked out in that conflict, the 
first pitched battle of which was then being 
fought out before them." Next day, writing to 
her husband, she says, " My bursting heart must 
find vent at my pen. ... I have just heard that 
our dear friend Dr. Warren is no more, but fell 
gloriously fighting for his country ; saying, better 
to die honorably in the field, than ignominiously 
hang upon the gallows. Great is our loss. . . . 
It is expected [the British] will come out over 
the Neck to-night, and a dreadful battle must 
ensue. Almighty God cover the heads of our 
countrymen, and be a shield to our dear friends ! " 
At the very hour in which Abigail Adams and 
her son were watching the battle of Bunker Hill, 
John Adams, with sagacious forethought, was 
securing the election of Colonel George Wash- 
ington of Virginia as commander-in-chief of the 
forces of the colonies. At a stroke he thus 
united North and South, and committed all 
the colonies to the war for liberty. Henceforth 
these two, George Washington, the great captain 
of the Revolution, and John Adams, the great 
statesman of the Revolution, loom conspicuous 
in those troubled times, and cease not their 
mighty labors till they have won freedom and 
independence for a people, and established in 
strength this vast Republic of the West. 



88 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

To secure the pledge of the whole country to 
take up the cause and the army of New England 
was certainly a great achievement ; it was no less 
an achievement to induce the whole country to 
speak with one voice the word Independence. 
Before the battle of Lexington he hardly dared 
breathe the thought in the hearing of Congress. 
Almost all the members were averse to such a step. 
His ideas are contemptuously spoken of as the rad- 
ical and leveling ideas of Massachusetts. He is 
"avoided like a man infected with the leprosy." 
"Even Washington," declares John Fiske, "when 
he came to take command of the army at Cam- 
bridge, after the battle of Bunker Hill, had not 
made up his mind that the object of the war was 
to be the independence of the colonies." In the 
same month of July, 1775, JefPerson said ex- 
pressly, " We have not raised armies with designs 
of separating from Great Britain and establish- 
ing indej)endent states. Necessity has not yet 
driven us into that desperate measure." John 
Adams, meanwhile, schooled himself to exercise 
patience, which was not exactly one of his vir- 
tues, and with suppressed passion waited for the 
hour that was sure to strike. " I am obliged to 
be on my guard," he writes, " yet the heat within 
will burst forth at times." Stubborn strength 
of will is, however, one of the very elements of 
the Adams make-up, and he fought on. Lexing- 
ton and Concord and Bunker Hill fought with 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 89 

him ; these and the rejection by the King of the 
" olive branch " petition, forced a hearing of his 
great thought. The burning of Portland assisted, 
so also did the publication of " Common Sense," 
by Thomas Paine. In March, 1776, Abigail 
Adams wrote : "I am charmed with the senti- 
ments of ' Common Sense,' and wonder how an 
honest heart, one who wishes the welfare of his 
country and the happiness of posterity, can hesi- 
tate one moment at adopting them. I want to 
know how these sentiments are received in Con- 
gress. I dare say there would be no difficulty 
in procuring a vote and instructions from all 
the Assembhes in New England for Independ- 
ency." 

And now, in May, Virginia adopted those fa- 
mous instructions to her delegates in Congress 
" to propose to that respectable body to declare 
the United Colonies free and independent states." 
Thus encouraged, John Adams, on the 15th of 
May, urged successfully the adoption of a reso- 
lution recommending all the colonies to form for 
themselves independent governments. In the 
preamble, which he wrote, it was declared that 
the American people could no longer conscien- 
tiously take oath to support any government 
deriving its authority from the Crown. This 
preamble, as Fiske says, " contained within itself 
the gist of the whole matter. To adopt it was 
virtually to cross the Rubicon." " The Gordian 



90 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

knot is cut at last ! " exclaimed John Adams. 
The thoughts of men, of whole provinces, now 
rapidly crystallized. Richard Henry Lee, "tall 
and commanding in person, with the noble coun- 
tenance of a Roman, the courage of a Caesar, and 
the eloquence of a Cicero," submitted to Congress, 
on the 7th of June, 1776, a motion embodying 
the instructions of Virginia. In the precise lan- 
guage, almost, of the Virginia Convention he 
moved, " That these United Colonies are, and of 
right ought to be, free and independent States ; 
that they are absolved from all allegiance to the 
British Crown, and that all political connection 
between them and the state of Great Britain, is, 
and ought to be, totally dissolved." The mo- 
tion was seconded, as a descendant of Patrick 
Henry writes, " by the glorious old John Adams," 
and "Massachusetts stood side by side with 
Virginia." Debate followed, but the decision 
was postponed for three weeks. Then, on the 
1st of July, Congress taking up the " resolution 
respecting independency " once more, John 
Adams led off in a speech of surpassing eloquence, 
and a " power of thought and expression which," 
said Jefferson, " moved the members from their 
seats." He was the " Colossus of that Congress," 
as Jefferson again testifies, the " Atlas of Inde- 
pendence," as Richard Stockton declared. He 
compelled conviction, and, at last, on the 2d of 
July, the flame in his own soul fused into a 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 91 

single molten current the aspirations of a peo- 
ple, and amid the glow of noble, daring, and 
fervent speech, the resolutions of independency 
were unanimously adopted. The preparation of 
the immortal Declaration had been previously 
submitted to a committee consisting of Jefferson, 
Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston, and 
on the evening of the 4th of July, it was adopted 
with equal unanimity. 

Elated and thankful was John Adams. In a 
burst of exultation he wrote to Mrs. Adams : 
" The 2d day of July, 1776, will be the most 
memorable epoch in the history of America. I 
am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by 
succeeding generations as the great anniversary 
festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the 
day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion 
to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized 
with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, 
guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one 
end of the continent to the other, from this 
time forward, forevermore." So the event has 
been celebrated, but the 4th of July, the date 
of the adoption of the Declaration, is the one 
the people recognize as the culminating moment 
of the great event. Then there suddenly rose 
" in the world a new empire styled the United 
States of America." 

Trumbull's picture of the signing of the 
Declaration is true to the life. John Adams, 



92 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

viewing it in Faneiiil Hall in his later years, re- 
called that, when engaged in signing it, a side 
conversation took place between Harrison, who 
was remarkably corpulent, and Elbridge Gerry, 
who was remarkably thin. " Ah, Gerry," said 
Harrison, " I shall have an advantage over you 
in this act." " How so ? " inquired Gerry. 
" Why," replied Harrison, " when we come to 
be hung for this treason, I am so heavy, I shall 
plump down upon the rope and be dead in an 
instant ; but you are so light, that you will be 
dangling and kicking about for an hour in the 
air. 

The indomitable patience, the conquering per- 
sistence, of John Adams at Philadelphia, were 
equaled by Abigail's display of heroic virtues at 
home. She sustained him by her affection and 
by her reenforcement of his convictions. " Let 
us separate from the King's party," she exhorts. 
" Let us renounce them and instead of supphca- 
tion as formerly, let us beseech the Almighty to 
blast their counsels and bring to naught all their 
devices." She is " farm woman," guiding wisely 
the sowing and the reaping which is to bring 
her children bread : she is the strength of her 
distracted neighbors, through terrors by night 
and day, through want, and through the horrors 
of a pestilence. Her home, indeed, is a centre 
of life and hope and inspiration. All this is 
luminous in those remarkable letters which have 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 93 

done so much to make known her great virtues 
and to extend her fame. During these exciting 
years of her husband's absence the young John 
Quincy is a great comfort to her. The Httle 
fellow when barely nine years old fearlessly be- 
comes her " post rider/' going on horseback unat- 
tended over the eleven long miles of the coun- 
try road to Boston for letters. And now she is to 
lose both the boy and his father. Word comes 
to John Adams, in November of 1777, then 
home hardly a month from Congress, announ- 
cing his appointment to the court of France. So 
on a February morning Mr. Adams and his boy 
drive down to Norton Quincy's, near the shore. 
The mother did not accompany them, feeling, it 
is likely, hardly equal to a second leave taking. 
It was a rough mid-winter voyage, in a vessel far 
from staunch, and there was no lack of excite- 
ment from perilous storms and possible Eng- 
lish cruisers. Mr. Adams exhibited much forti- 
tude and practical wisdom, and he testified that 
" Johnnie behaved like a man." In this, as in 
all his missions abroad, John Adams comported 
himself magnificently, upholding with audacious 
courage the rights and honor of his native coun- 
try. He was as unyielding in his demands for 
consideration as if he had the America of to-day 
behind him, and secured, in treaties of peace and 
commerce, concessions his colleagues had deemed 
impossible. 



94 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

After an absence of eighteen months he re- 
turned to Braintree, August 2, 1779, landing on 
the very beach of the Mount Wollaston farm, 
close to Norton Quincy's house, from which he 
had embarked a year and a half before. So use- 
ful a citizen was not long permitted to enjoy the 
repose and delights of his home. Hardly a week 
had passed by when the town voted to send a 
delegate — but one, though others were called 
for — to the convention which was to frame a 
State constitution, and " the Hon'ble John 
Adams, Esq., was chosen for that purpose." The 
convention instructed him to draw up a draught 
for its consideration, and this, as Mellen Cham- 
berlain writes, furnished the model for the Con- 
stitution of Massachusetts and other States, and 
from it was adopted the form of the general 
government in the Constitution of the United 
States. "Fifty millions of people to-day live 
under a constitution the essential features of 
which are after his model." 

John Adams was not allowed to remain with 
the convention long enough to present the model 
himself. He was again sent abroad, and the 
draught was passed over to his associates on the 
committee, James Bowdoin and Samuel Adams. 
He again went to France ; this time to assist in 
the negotiations for peace. While still abroad 
he was in May of 1785 appointed our first min- 
ister to the English court. At that time he was 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 95 

in London, where his wife had joined him the 
year before. " I remember her/' wrote Josiah 
Quincy, describing her departure, "a matronly 
beauty, in which respect she yielded to few of 
her sex, full of joy and elevated with hope. 
Peace had just been declared. Independence ob- 
tained, and she was preparing to go from that 
humble mansion to join the husband she loved 
at the Court of St. James." 

Upon their return to America Mr. Adams was 
immediately appointed once more a delegate to 
Congress, but before he had time to serve his 
country in that capacity he was elevated to the 
position of Vice-President. This office, as was 
then the rule, went to the person who received the 
second highest vote for President. Washington 
and John Adams, one in character and patri- 
otism, united to lead the New Republic on its 
untried way ! What an exalted illustration was 
that of the ideal of representative government, 
the choice of the best men for rulers ! Loyally 
Adams labored with Washington through the 
eight years of his administration, and then, in 
1797, he himself was elected to the Presidency. 
Four stormier, more exacting years had not 
fallen to his lot than these in which he was now 
put foremost to assist the country to adjust it- 
self to its internal and external relations. Wash- 
ington's second term had been more harassing, 
perturbed, and exacting than the first. The 



96 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDEXCE BEGAN 

country was restless in the uncertainty of its 
attitude toward England and France in their 
gigantic conflict ; the raw material of free citi- 
zenship was not yet consolidated into a nation ; 
local attachments had not been modified, nor 
jealousies expelled by the power of a wider 
patriotism. All these excitants of irritation, 
augmented, were bequeathed to the administra- 
tion of John Adams. Through bitterest parti- 
san strife, through the selfish intrigues of the 
French, through the domineering of the Eng- 
lish, he never was less than noble. Passionately 
he resented what he felt to be injustice, impa- 
tiently he girded at plain stupidity. The Adamses 
are born that way ; they are not conspicuous for 
meekness. But the welfare of the country was 
his supreme care, and for that he esteemed no 
sacrifice too great. 

His administration, it is not to be denied, was 
admirable in its strength. With the vigorous 
practical sense so characteristic of him, he saw 
things just as they were, measured accurately 
the human elements and tendencies in the great 
adversaries that threatened from foreign shores, 
instinctively divined the right and the possible. 
Consequently the lines of his policy took on a 
permanent character not to be set aside by the 
"' peaceable coercion " or other theories of his 
successor. He held the new nation to its predes- 
tined course with firm grasp, however strong the 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 97 

sweep of deflecting currents or wildly tempestuous 
the seas. Time has justified his chief measures, 
and none more than the inception of that navy 
which in these later days has gained for our na- 
tion so much renown. This was congenial work, 
for there was deep in him an irrepressible Ber- 
serker element. The rage of fight was easily 
aroused in him for a just cause. " Above all, war, 
for a profession," is what he thought of in start- 
ing out in life, and while the Revolution lasted, 
his hand itched to grasp the sword. 

For a republic so divinely born, and watched 
over still by the venerated founders, the amount 
of original sin developed was surprising. Jeal- 
ousies, misunderstandings, intrigues, party pas- 
sions, were sorrowfully proportionate, in volume 
and intensity, to what humbles us in these degen- 
erate days. And most unexpected of all, for its 
touch of ingratitude, was the uprising of " un- 
girt " democracy against the straight-laced, dig- 
nified, and ideal statesmanship of Washington 
and Adams. John Adams failed of reelection to 
a second term. He was deeply hurt ; cut to the 
heart. Frank and open as the day, and altogether 
devoted to his country, he hated with a perfect 
hatred the undero^round schemino; and self-seek- 
ing which he was persuaded had confused and 
perverted the judgment of the people. Majestic 
as Lear in his indignation and wrath, he turned 
his face eastward, not waiting to greet his sue- 



98 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

cessor, Thomas Jefferson. Discourteous, was it ? 
Pardonable, for all that, as the fling of an hon- 
est man who could not bring his soul to dissem- 
ble in a last official function. 

The disappointment over his defeat for a 
second term was almost balanced by the joy of 
return to " still, calm, happy Braintree." That 
part of it in which he lived had been set off in 
1792, and called Quincy, after John Quincy, 
whose name Mr. Adams had given to his own 
son. Not to the " little hut " did he return, how- 
ever, but to a habitation more in keeping with 
his station. This was the house of Leonard Vas- 
sall, a West India planter, which, after the Rev- 
olution, had been sequestrated as Tory property. 
It was built in 1731, and Mr. Adams bought it 
in 1785. The Vassalls were genteel people, and 
rigid Episcopalians. Mr. Vassall, before his mar- 
riage, made a will with the provision that his 
widow should have the use and improvement of 
his real estate so long as she continued " a pro- 
fessed member of the Episcopal Church of Eng- 
land." The house in Quincy was used as a sum- 
mer resort, and still contains one room paneled 
from floor to ceiling in solid St. Domingo mahog- 
any. Originally a small dwelling, it has been 
added to until the earlier structure is almost lost 
in the wide front and deep gabled wings of the 
later structure. 

Here John Adams and his wife were to spend 




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THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 99 

the remainder of their days, honored by their 
townspeople, visited by eminent foreigners and 
by adoring Americans. Here they celebrated 
their golden wedding, and here too, marvelous 
to relate, was celebrated the golden wedding of 
their son John Quincy Adams, and that of their 
grandson, Charles Francis Adams. What testi- 
mony is this to the vitality of the Adams family ! 
John Adams never seemed to have any declin- 
ing years. In his retirement he continued to rise 
as early as four or five o'clock, often building 
his own fire. When the weather permitted he 
walked up the lane opposite his house to the top 
of " Presidents' Hill," twice every day, to see the 
sun rise and set. And on Sunday, whatever the 
weather, he attended divine service at the church 
of his fathers. With sympathetic observation he 
noted the continuous advance of a more genial 
and spiritual religion gaining upon the leaden 
atmosphere of New England theology. Excellent 
were his opportunities in this regard, for the 
ablest ministers in Massachusetts sought ex- 
changes with Parson Whitney of the Quincy 
church. Josiah Quincy, in his " Figures of the 
Past," conducts us into the old meeting-house, 
crowded with its farmer folk, its village aristo- 
cracy, its judges, captains, and distinguished visi- 
tors ; and we can almost see in the front pew on 
the right of the broad aisle the dignified form 
of the President. 



100 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

" An air of respectful deference to John 
Adams seemed to pervade the building. The 
ministers brought their best sermons when they 
came to exchange, and had a certain conscious- 
ness in their manner as if officiating before roy- 
alty. The medley of stringed and wind instru- 
ments in the gallery — a survival of the sacred 
trumpets and shawms mentioned by King David 
— seemed to the imagination of a child to be 
makinof discord togfether in honor of the vener- 
able chief who was the centre of interest." 

In the rural surroundings of his Quincy home 
John Adams met Lafayette for the last time. 
When they were both younger they had associ- 
ated on intimate terms in France and in America. 
Together they had gone through the great strug- 
gle for American independence, and now when 
that struggle was all behind them, and Lafayette 
as well as himself was advanced in years, they 
were to meet again for a moment, and then to 
part forever. With much emotion the President 
waited for his guest. When Lafayette appeared 
he rose to meet him, and the two venerable men 
threw their arms about each other's neck, and 
lifted up their voices and wept. Afterwards 
Lafayette visited the Quincys. " That was not 
the John Adams I remember," he said, — a 
thought which also came to Mr. Adams, who 
said, " That was not the Lafayette I remember." 
Forty years had made a great difference. Two 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 101 

little ofrandcliildren of the President, Elizabeth C. 
Adams and Isaac Hull Adams, begged to be al- 
lowed to remain in the room, and saw the whole 
scene. EHzabeth is living to-day (1902, aged 
ninety-four), and her memory of all that took 
place then is vivid, and connects us directly with 
that distant time. She occupies the old house 
of their father, Chief Justice Thomas Boylston 
Adams, on Elm Street, Quincy. 

In his last days John Adams became recon- 
ciled to Thomas Jefferson, and together they 
carried on a friendly correspondence : now at the 
solemn close they were to be associated in a man- 
ner strikingly dramatic and appropriate. "On 
the 4th of July, 1826," writes C. F. Adams, the 
younger, " the town celebrated with special re- 
joicings the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. 
It was celebrated as its sturdiest supporter had 
fifty years before predicted it would be, as ' a 
day of deliverance, with pomp and parade, with 
shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and 
illuminations.' " On that fair glad day — in the 
midst of peace and prosperity and political good 
feeling, with the sound of joyous bells and boom- 
ing guns ringing in his ears, with his own toast 
of " Independence forever " still lingering on 
the lips of his townsmen — the spirit of the 
old patriot passed away. His last words were, 
" Thomas Jefferson still survives." But Jeffer- 
son, too, had passed away a few hours earlier on 
that memorable Independence Day. 



102 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

"His beloved and only wife/' Abigail, had died 
some eight years before this, on the 28th of 
October, 1818. That union of more than half a 
century had been as ideal as our humanity may 
illustrate. " They survived in harmony of sen- 
timent, principle, and affection the tempests of 
civil commotion ; meeting undaunted and sur- 
mounting the terrors and trials of that Revolu- 
tion which secured the freedom of their country, 
improved the condition of their times, and bright- 
ened the prospects of futurity to the race of man 
upon earth." So enduring, so perfect, so benefi- 
cent generally had been this union that it seems 
as though in the scheme of things they should 
have lived together to the end, and in a day have 
been summoned to that eternal companionship 
in which, neither marrying nor given in mar- 
riage, they are " like the angels which are in 
heaven." The desolation of the years of sepa- 
ration bore heavily upon John Adams, but he 
was sustained by his Christian faith and habitual 
acceptance of all which the Divine order imposed. 
Besides the famous John Quincy they had four 
other children : Abigail, born July 14, 1765, who 
married H. W. Smith ; Susanna, born December 
28, 1768, who died in 1770 ; Charles, born May 
29, 1770, who married Sarah Smith, and Thomas 
Boylston, born September 15, 1772, who married 
Ann Harod. 

Moved, as John Adams expressed it, " by the 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 103 

veneration he felt for the residence of his ances- 
tors and the place of his nativity, and the hahitual 
affection he bore to the inhabitants with whom 
he had so happily lived for more than eighty-six 
years," he left his large and valuable library to 
the town of Quincy, and gave lands for the sup- 
port of a school for the teaching of the Greek 
and Roman languages, and, if thought advisable, 
the Hebrew. In 1871 the Academy building was 
erected on the site of the house in which John 
Hancock was born. A gift as generous was also 
made to the ancient First Church, with which he 
and all his ancestors had been activly connected, 
enabling it to build in place of the old wooden 
structure a stately stone temple of worship. It 
was finished in 1828, and under its portico his 
remains and those of his wife were eventually 
entombed. There, in a square chamber solidly 
walled with granite, and closed with iron doors, 
they rest side by side in two immense granite 
sarcophagi, " till the trump shall sound," as a 
mural tablet within the church declares. 

In connection with this Quincy celebration of 
the Fourth, John Adams sent to his fellow citi- 
zens of the United States his last deliberate mes- 
sage on Independence. The following letter, now 
first brought to light, has been preserved among 
her family papers by Mrs. Abigail Whitney, 
formerly of Quincy, but now living with her 
daughter, Mrs. WilHam R. Poison of Brooklyn, 



104 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

N. Y. Mrs. Whitney is the widow of William F. 
Whitney, a nephew of the Captain John Whitney 
to whom the letter is addressed. The italics fol- 
low the underscoring of the dictation, and make 
more manifest the fact that the aged patriot was 
conscious that these were his last words upon the 
great principle to which he had devoted his life. 
How weighty they are with his soul's conviction 1 
What force of will constrained the trembling hand 
to write the signature, perhaps his last ! 

QuiNCY, June 7, 1826. 

Captain John Whitney, Chairman of the Committee of 
arrangements, for celebrating the approaching Anniver- 
sary of the 4:th of July in the town of Quincy. 

Sir, — Your letter of the 3*^ Instant, written on behalf 
of the Committee of Arrangements, for the approaching cele- 
bration of our National Independence, inviting me to dine, 
on the Fourth of July next, with the citizens of Quincy, at 
the Town Hall, has been received with the kindest emo- 
tions. The very respectful language with which the wishes 
of my Fellow Townsmen have been conveyed to me by your 
Committee, and the terms of afEectionate regard toward me 
individually, demand my grateful thanks, which you will 
please to accept and to communicate to your Colleagues of 
the Committee. 

The present feeble state of my health will not permit me 
to indulge the hope of participating, with more than by my 
best wishes in the joys and festivities and the solemn services 
of that day ; on which will be completed the fiftieth year 
from its birth, the Independence of these Uiiited States. A 
MEMORABLE epoch in the annals of the human race ; des- 
tined, in future history, to form the brightest or the blackest 
page, according to the use or the abuse of those political in- 



THE GREAT ADVOCATE OF INDEPENDENCE 105 

stitutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by 
the human mind. 

I pray you, sir, to tender in my behalf to our fellow citi- 
zens my cordial thanks for their affectionate good wishes, 
and to be assured that I am 



^2^^^ y^-c^^ 




^MJ^ 



(Arrrg^ 



VI 

THE PURITAN PRESIDENT, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

John Adams lived long enough to rejoice in 
the election of his son John Quincy Adams to 
the Presidency. Modestly, in a brief note, the 
one writes of his election, devoutly the other gives 
his patriarchal blessing. Such a conjunction 
stands alone in our history. It so afPected the 
imagination of some opponents that they flung 
out insinuations of a revival of monarchical insti- 
tutions in this bringing in of " John the Second 
of the House of Braintree." But it was by his 
own strength of character, his wide intelligence, 
his exalted virtues, and his measureless service, 
that John Quincy Adams won this tribute from 
the nation, and not because he was the son of his 
father. Great men were they both ; among the. 
greatest whom America honors. Do we curiously 
inquire which was the more towering figure ? It 
were no easy task to try to set one above the 
other. The elder may have excelled in original 
power, but the younger surpassed in learning. In 
both was the moral earnestness of the Puritan, 
and the indomitable will which forces the subject 
brain and heart to do marvels, and wrests from 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 107 

the gods gifts for man before they are quite 
due. 

Through what a strange and varied career John 
Quincy Adams chmbed to equal eminence with his 
father ! In foreign lands and in Washington the 
greater part of his life was lived, far distant from 
his native town ; nevertheless it was in Quincy 
that the pure gold of his inherited nature received 
the royal stamp which the friction of years only 
wore brighter. As a boy, standing there on 
Penn's Hill with his mother, his soul thrilling in 
response to the thunders of Bunker Hill, he was 
established in the elements of character which 
made the man. Dutiful, unselfish, sensible, fine 
in every instinct, " wisdom his early, only choice," 
he was about as near the ideal child of an ideal 
Puritan home as New England might produce. 
Not in any priggish or formal sense was he this. 
He was a genuine boy, unhurt by the serious at- 
mosphere of his home ; full of life, loving the 
woodlands, playing at soldier with the Colonials 
who camped in his father's barn on their way to 
the front, and finding it hard among so many 
distractions to get down to his books. Indeed, 
he thought he would rather work on the farm 
than study. After a day's test at ditching he 
went back to his dry Latin grammar with much 
content. He matured rapidly, that is the point, 
for he was teachable and the right principles were 
in him. While yet a boy he w^as manly. He 



108 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

astonished even his mother. When she was united 
to him in London, he then sixteen years of age, 
she cried out that his appearance " is that of a 
man, and in his countenance the most perfect 
good humor ; his conversation by no means de- 
nies his stature." And why should he not be all 
this ! Europe had been an open page before him. 
At Paris, at Amsterdam, at Leyden, his eyes were 
filled and his soul was fed with scenes and books 
and the ways of men. When not quite fourteen 
he actually found himself launched upon a diplo- 
matic career, going to Russia v^dth envoy Dana, 
and back at Paris, serving as additional secretary 
to Jefferson, Franklin, and his father in negoti- 
ating the final treaty with Great Britain. 

How fascinating this life must have been to 
him ! and now that his father was minister to the 
Court of St. James, and his mother residing in 
London with him, what a temptation there was to 
continue it ! And he might have done so, but 
for that Puritan conscience of his. Oxford, se- 
questered " in the quiet and still air of delightful 
studies " allured him. Subscription to the Thir- 
ty-Nine Articles, however, stood in the way, an 
obstacle not to be surmounted. He could not so 
stultify himself as to sign what he did not believe, 
nor would his father encourage such stultifica- 
tion. This, and the conviction that in America 
he could " get his own living in an honorable 
manner," and " live independent and free," de- 




JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 




LOUISA CATHERINE ADAMS 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 109 

cicled him to return home and enter Harvard Col- 
lege. 

Along these lines his nature, according to its 
kind, unfolded in fresh surprises of fortitude, 
resourcefulness, noble daring, and passion for 
justice. Sturdily independent as he was from 
the beginning, and disciplined to do his duty at 
all costs, he was yet tolerant where tolerance was 
a virtue ; friendly too in that early day, with a 
fine flavor of poetry and a deep sense of piety 
refining all his aspirations. Stern and grim he 
came to be ; but it was the bitter conflict thrust 
upon him that made him so. And what a fighter 
he was ! How prompt and hard he hit ! How 
fearless, facing alone a host of foes ! A hero, 
grand among the great figures of the world; 
our Cromwell ! America's completest realization 
of Puritanism in its strength ! 

Let us recall the earlier picture, however, — the 
young man of thirty, so intellectual, so ideal, 
spiritual, as painted by Copley ; for this is the 
year in which he married Louisa Catherine John- 
son. She was the second daughter of Joshua 
Johnson, then American consul at London, and 
a niece of Governor Johnson of Maryland, signer 
of the Declaration and justice of the Supreme 
Court. Mr. Adams met her in London, where 
by request of Washington he, the minister to the 
Hague, had gone to assist in some negotiations. 
They were married on the morning of July 26, 



110 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

1797, in the Church of All Hallows, Barking. 
Their honeymoon abroad seemed destined to be 
brief, for John Adams was elected President soon 
after this, and he and John Quincy both felt that 
a nice regard for the proprieties of politics called 
for the resignation of the son. But Washington 
wrote promptly to President Adams urging him 
to retain John Quincy, " the most valuable public 
character we have abroad, and the ablest of all 
our diplomatic corps." So he continued in his 
mission to the Hague till the election of Jefferson, 
four years later. 

Ended apparently was his public career, at 
least for some time, and he sturdily turned to 
the practice of law. But it was only the quiet 
moment before the tumult of the storm, — the 
brief calm dividing between the life of plain, 
if masterly, sailing, and the deadly, unremitting 
struggle with the black rage of elemental pas- 
sions let loose from the pit. And the marvel of 
it is, he never lost his hold on the helm, and, 
however baffled, never failed to bring his ship to 
the course laid down by conscience. For politi- 
cal honesty and lofty patriotism history will be 
searched in vain for a statesman surpassing him. 
The hip-h Roman manner was bettered in his 
Christian devotion to ideal right. " He never 
knowingly," as John T.Morse, Jr., declares, " did 
wrong, nor even sought to persuade himself that 
wrong was right." And vigorously was this virtue 



THE PUKITAN PRESIDENT 111 

manifested, — not cloister-like, but frankly and 
ruggedly, and mixed with wholesome human an- 
ger. There was the man for the times, every inch 
of him, " the Baresark marrow in his bones " ! 
Just the man for these times too, if we had the 
wit to perceive it ; but our idols must be machine 
made, patterned according to party creed, no 
uncalculable touch of the Almighty's hand in 
them. 

Almost always when John Quincy Adams's name 
is uttered, deprecatory hands are raised at remem- 
brance of his relentless scoring of contemporaries. 
It was "thorough ;" that word, dear to Puritan- 
ism, is graphic, — no one was left out, and he 
had an instinct for the vital defects of opponents. 
In that diary of his, one of the most remark- 
able ever written, both for volume and the value 
of its information, his denunciations are flung 
right and left impartially. Be it noted, however, 
that this is never done cynically. Angrily and 
bitterly he strikes out, and it is all because his 
victims seem to fall so far below the ideal when 
ideal men and measures were so sorely needed. 
For this he never spared others, he never 
spared himself. " The stars were not clean in 
his sight." His high ideals were his glory and 
his sorrow. " Never did a man of pure life and 
just purposes," says Morse, " have fewer friends 
or more enemies than John Quincy Adams." 
Tender-hearted as he was, it was no less than 



112 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

tragic. " An age of sorrow and a life of storm/' 
are the words he wrote late in life under his own 
portrait. These ideals, so largely responsible for 
the lamentable issue, were not poor limited preju- 
dices, puritanical in the popular sense, but high 
and humane, — genuine revelations of the eternal, 
worthy visions for the man who nobly aspires and 
a nation which renews the hope of the world. 
Naturally they made him impatient with what 
seemed the life-wasting distractions of some and 
the degenerate self-seeking of others. While in 
Ghent, laboring for the most favorable terms of 
peace, he cannot withhold his scorn when, rising 
at five in the morning to begin the work of the 
day, he hears parties breaking up and leaving Mr. 
Clay's room across the entry, where they have been 
playing cards all night long. His self-restraint 
and self -discipline gradually enveloped him in a 
reserve which was taken to be lack of sympathy 
and excess of aristocratic pride. The genial 
current of his soul seemed to the undiscerning 
to be frozen. But no leader in our democracy 
ever dedicated himself more entirely to the de- 
fence and establishment of equal rights. He 
would not truckle to any, nor with false bland- 
ishments seek to win the plain man of the people. 
He respected himself, and he respected others as 
highly as himself. The sacredness of the human 
soul he felt as deeply as did his favorite minister. 
Dr. Channing. He was in the grandest sense 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 113 

an absolute democrat. As Theodore Parker elo- 
quently declared, " he fought, not for a kingdom^ 
not for fame, but for justice and the eternal 
right ; fought, too, with weapons tempered in a 
heavenly stream." Every day was begun with 
the reading of a chapter or two in the Bible, and 
every day was closed with that petition learned 
at his mother's knee, " Now I lay me down to 
sleep." 

Greatest and last of the Puritans was he, a 
figure growing ever greater in the ethical per- 
spective of human advancement. He could be 
no partisan. He was too much of an American 
for that, as was soon made plain. The Federal- 
ists of Boston drew him from his retirement by 
electing him in 1802 to the state Senate, and 
in 1803 to the national Senate. At the out- 
set he voted for what he thought was wise and 
right, without regard to the claims of party ; and 
when the Federalists threw themselves abjectly 
at the feet of England, fearing the selfish in- 
trigues of France, he would have no part in the 
humiliation. " Put your trust in neither France 
nor England ; let America trust itself," was his 
counsel. The increasing arrogance of the Brit- 
ish, their impressment of our seamen, their de- 
struction of our commerce, enraged him. Better 
resistance, though almost hopeless, than supine 
endurance of such wrongs. Culminating atrocity ! 
The English gunboat Leopard opened her broad- 



114 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

sides upon our unprepared frigate, the Chesa- 
peake, killing and maiming her seamen, and 
dragging from among them four men charged 
with being British subjects. Adams summoned 
the Federalists to crowd Faneuil Hall with an 
indignation meeting, and when they delayed he 
did not hesitate to attend a similar meeting of 
the Jeffersonians. For this he was branded as 
a traitor to his party, and his successor to the 
Senate was nominated insultingly early. Cost 
what it might, this was the kind of thing Mr. 
Adams was always ready to do. His reverence 
for his country and her institutions was so pro- 
found he could do nothing unworthy of them. 

Madison appointed him minister to Russia, 
and through four years he illustrated there the 
simple democratic dignity of his people. As one 
of the commissioners at Ghent to secure the treaty 
of peace which ended the war of 1812, his claims 
are as bold as if he represented the undoubted 
victors in that conquest. Audaciously he " goes 
one better " whenever the British raise their 
terms in the diplomatic "game of bluff," actu- 
ally insisting that Canada should be ceded to the 
United States. A treaty was secured so advan- 
tageous to this country that the EngHsh ruefully 
declared that better could not have been obtained 
had the Americans been triumphanto In 1815 
he was appointed envoy extraordinary and min- 
ister plenipotentiary to Great Britain. America 



% 
THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 115 

was SO heartily disliked and contemned that he 
was shown the most studied disfavor. Imper- 
turbably, however, he went about his duties, and 
with great intelligence and tact won for his coun- 
try all the consideration that was possible. 

It was, however, as Secretary of State that his 
faith in his country found completest expression. 
The world must be '' familiarized with the idea 
of considering our proper domain to be the 
continent of America." He secured Florida, he 
furthered the acquisition of Louisiana, he wrote 
to our minister at Madrid " that it is scarcely 
possible to resist the conviction that the annexa- 
tion of Cuba to our federal republic will be indis- 
pensable to the continuance and integrity of the 
Union," and he warned the Czar that " we should 
contest the rights of Kussia to any territorial 
establishment on this continent." In short his 
one grand idea was " that we should assume dis- 
tinctly the principle that the American continents 
are no longer subjects for any new European 
colonial establishments." Here is the first ap- 
pearance in our history, as C, F. Adams, the elder, 
notes, of the policy so well known afterward as 
the Monroe Doctrine. Father of it was he, basing 
it upon the righteous principle of " the consent 
of the governed, affirmed in our Declaration of 
Independence." 

Then came the trying time of his election to 
the presidency. Mean personal politics, intrigue, 



116 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

slander, marked the contest. All this only served 
to set in clearer light the lofty character of Mr. 
Adams. He kept himself aloof from the strife, 
and would " do absolutely nothmg for his own 
election." He had pursued the course Emer- 
son praises in Michael Angelo, " to confide in 
one's self and be of worth and value ; " he had 
served his country as well as he knew how, and 
with absolute devotion. Would the people ap- 
preciate this ? He hungered for their favorable 
verdict ; no one better deserved it, yet his high 
spirit so revolted at the mere suggestion of bid- 
ding for votes that he retired behind a more 
distant reserve than ever. " If the people wish 
me to be President I shall not refuse the office, 
but I ask nothing from any man or any body 
of men." It was not indifference ; it was not 
affectation of pride. It was the feeling that the 
fine bloom of honors bestowed in a democracy 
resides essentially in the spontaneous confidence 
of the people. He would have this or nothing. 
And when the vote turned out disappointingly 
small he frankly declared he would refuse the 
of&ce if by so doing another opportunity would 
be afforded " the people to form and express with 
a nearer approach to unanimity the object of 
their preference." His respect for the people 
was as high as his own self-respect. Late in life 
he said, " I have never sought public trust ; but 
public trust has always sought me. And when 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 117 

invested with it I have given my whole soul to 
the performance of its duties." 

No great measures marked the presidency of 
John Quincy Adams, but was it not glorified by 
his simple confidence in the higher principles of 
election on the one hand, and his entire reliance 
upon merit in all appointments to of&ce on the 
other ? Sturdily he kept to his determination to 
retain every person his predecessor had placed 
'' against whom there was no complaint which 
would warrant his removal." And for new ap- 
pointments he considered alone the fitness of the 
men to serve their country, and not their party 
affiliations. " It was magnificent," but as is often 
enough said, it was not practical politics, and in- 
vited his defeat for a second term. His man- 
hood and his pure patriotism suffered no defeat, 
whatever befell officialdom. Ideal democracy 
never had more superb exemplification. Would 
that the country could have kept to that high 
standard ! The subsequent debauchery of the 
public service by the spoils system is a suffi- 
ciently costly warning that neither the people's 
honesty nor their freedom will be preserved to 
them until they return to the just principles of 
President John Quincy Adams. 

The sun of his poHtical life, as he records, was 
now setting in the deepest gloom. He had 
labored for the welfare of the nation, and not at 
all for his own advancement. Honestly could he 



118 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

write, " I have devoted my life and all the fac- 
ulties of my soul to the Union, and to the im- 
provement, physical, moral, and intellectual of 
my country." And what is his reward ? To be 
flung aside contumeliously, and to see the smart 
and the unscrupulous triumph over him ! He 
returns to Quincy at the age of sixty-two, poor 
in pocket, and solicitous that in the quiet of a 
country town he may find something to do, so 
that his '' mind may not be left to corrode itself." 
Ungrateful and dull of soul the people who 
permitted this ! Such words surge to the front, 
expressive of heartfelt indignation. But the 
people were neither ungrateful nor dull. They 
were only hostile, in a growing combination 
of them. The South, gradually consolidating 
in defense of slavery, had discerned in John 
Quincy Adams a spirit inimical to its institution. 
Their prophetic soul had indeed found out their 
great antagonist. As early as when he was 
Secretary of State he had recorded in his diary 
that " slavery is the great and foul stain upon 
the North American Union." " Oh, if but one 
man," he cries, " could arise with a genius capa- 
ble of comprehending, and an utterance capable 
of communicating those eternal truths that be- 
long to this question, to lay bare in all its wicked- 
ness the outrage upon the goodness of God, — 
human slavery ! " Little did he think then that 
he was that man. But now, when his career 




?"^. 



•^ 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 119 

seemed closed, and at the end of days, he was 
called forth to battle with the giant wrong, and 
wrought such deeds for justice against over- 
whelming numbers as no known congress or par- 
liament of men had ever witnessed. A crowded 
life, intense, valiant, achieving, he had lived out 
to what would, in the usual order of things, seem 
a consummation. It proved to be but the intro- 
duction to the epoch of his career. The best 
was to come. 

The suggestion was made to him in 1830 that 
he might be elected, if he wished, to the national 
House of Representatives from the ninth Massa- 
chusetts district, which included Quincy. Would 
it degrade an ex-President to accept such a posi- 
tion ? Mr. Adams " had in that respect no 
scruples whatever. No person could be degraded 
by serving the people as a Representative in 
Congress. Nor in my opinion would an ex-Pres- 
ident of the United States be degraded by serv- 
inof as a selectman of his town, if elected thereto 
by the people.'' A few weeks later he received 
a very flattering vote, and for sixteen years he 
filled that office, making proud the hearts of the 
residents of the district by his magnificent repre- 
sentation of their ideals of freedom. 

It fell to him in the very beginning to present 
a petition for the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia ; but it was not till 1835, when 
the annexation of Texas began to be mooted, 



120 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

that the slave question loomed large on the hori- 
zon, and he came to the front. He became the 
valiant defender of the right of petition, pre- 
sented more petitions, and the South blundered 
in applying the " gag law." It was a grievous 
assault upon our free institution. How the " old 
man eloquent " defied it, and portrayed the ini- 
quity of it and the system it shielded ! His 
parliamentary knowledge, his merciless invective, 
his quick intelligence, his grim composure, found 
out all the weak points in the array set against 
him, and now stung them to madness, and now 
held them at bay writhing impotently. " Num- 
bers could not overawe him," writes Morse, " nor 
loneliness dispirit him. He was probably the 
most formidable fighter in debate of whom parha- 
mentary records preserve the memory." For ten 
years he endured the strain, almost alone at first, 
and then gradually winning adherents, until, on 
December 3, 1844, a majority swept the tyran- 
nous rules from the House. " Blessed, forever 
blessed, be the name of God ! " was his rever- 
ent acknowledgment. His work was now done. 
Human strength could go no farther. His voice 
was still heard for freedom, his clear mind could 
still pass upon measures in debate, but there were 
no more triumphs for him. On February 21, 
1848, he rose as if to address the Speaker of the 
House and immediately fell unconscious. He 
was carried to the Speaker's room, and late in the 



THE PURITAN PRESIDENT 121 

afternoon, coming to himself for a moment, he 
said distinctly, " This is the last of earth ; I am 
content." On the evening of the 23d he passed 
away. " I know few things in modern times," 
said Theodore Parker, " so grand as that old 
man standing there in the Honse of Representa- 
tives, — the compeer of Washington ; a man who 
had borne himself proudly in kings' courts, early 
doing service in high places, where honor may 
be won ; a man who had filled the highest office 
in the nation's gift ; a President's son, himself a 
President, standing there the champion of the 
neediest, of the oppressed : the conquering cause 
pleased others, him only the cause of the con- 
quered." His remains were removed to Quincy, 
and there they lie with those of his wife in a 
granite chamber adjoining the one in which 
rests the dust of his parents. Imposing was the 
gathering of statesmen, scholars, and neighbors 
in the Stone Temple at the funeral. The exalted 
emotions of the hour still throb in Whittier's 
stanzas : — 

" He rests with the immortals ; his journey has been long : 
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong ! 
So well and bravely has he done the work he found to do, 
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever true. 

" Strong to the end, a man of men, from out the strife he passed : 
The grandest hour of all his life was that of earth the last. 
Now 'midst his snowy hills of home to the grave they bear him 

down 
The glory of his fourscore years resting on him like a crown." 



VII 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR 

THE UNION 

" Another for Hector ! " The words of the 
loyal old Highlander, and the answering rush of 
his stout sons, one after another, to defend their 
chief, come to mind as one thinks of the re- 
curring summons of America to her offspring 
of the Adams race, and their prompt and effec- 
tive response, " Another for the Union ! " And 
where John Quincy Adams fell at his post stands 
Charles Francis Adams, resolute, valiant, ade- 
quate. He is at the front when the press of foes 
is perilous, and is as level to the emergency as 
any of his kin. Our great minister to England 
during the Civil War, what dangers he averted ! 
" None of our generals in the field," said 
James Russell Lowell, " not Grant himself, did 
us better or more trying service than he in his 
forlorn outpost of London." Best of all, he 
did it in the high, manly way organic in his 
ancestors. He, too, was nobly Puritan, — that 
is, he earnestly strove to shape his Kfe by the 
most elevated moral ideals, and to labor as ever 
in his great Taskmaster's eye. Not alone by 



^^ r^. 



t 




XoA/i/rltJ ^WlKUy ^4Jal4^. 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 123 

his rare tact and judgment did he win battles, 
but by his directness, his grand simplicity of 
character, his clear reliance upon the highest 
conceptions of justice and truth. In its cumula- 
tive power what an inspiration to the Kepublic is 
the constancy of these Adamses, through three 
or more generations of resolute obedience to the 
moral ideal ! Does it not illuminate the saving 
element of our nation, now desperately, as in a 
death struggle, arrayed against the black smother 
of commercialism in trade and politics ? Does 
it not call upon all the true-hearted in this pre- 
sent time to abate not a jot " of what makes 
manhood dear " and the State beneficent ? 

Charles Francis Adams was born, not in Quincy, 
but in Boston, where his father was temporarily 
practising law, representing his State in the na- 
tional Senate, and incidentally serving as Boyl- 
ston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Har- 
vard. The date of his birth is August 18, 1807, 
his two brothers, George Washington and John, 
preceding him, though he long outlived them. 
Scarce was he two years old when he was swept 
into that world-wide errantry of his father, goino- 
with him on his mission to Kussia. His edu- 
cation there, as might be expected, fell into the 
hands of his parents. The father spent many 
hours a day at it, and read books of science just 
to qualify himself to improve his child's under- 
standing. " To be profitable to my children," 



124 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

he humbly wrote, " seems to me to be within the 
compass of my powers. To that let me bound 
my wishes and my prayers." The mother ably 
assisted him in all this. After they had left Rus- 
sia, after Mrs. Adams with her son had followed 
her husband to Paris, entering the city two days 
behind Napoleon swiftly speeding from Elba, 
after two years spent in England, where Charles 
at a boarding-school learns Latin and the Eng- 
lish character, after their return to America, we 
read this entry in John Quincy Adams's diary : 
" June 11, 1819. My wife has made a transla- 
tion of the first and second Alcibiades," from 
the French. " She made it for the benefit of 
her sons ; and I this morning finished the revisal 
of it, in which I have made very little altera- 
tion. . . . The indissoluble union of moral 
beauty and goodness, the indispensable duty 
of seeking self-knowledge and self-improvement, 
and the exalted doctrine which considers the 
body as merely the mortal instrument of the 
soul, and the soul alone as man, made a deep 
impression on me. . . . The lessons of Soc- 
rates were lost upon Alcibiades ; they were not 
entirely so upon me. . . . My conduct in life 
has been occasionally marked by the passions of 
my nature, by the frailty of my constitution, by 
the weakness of my head and of my heart. But 
it has always been my will, and generally my 
endeavor, to discharge all my duties in life to 




ABIGAIL BROOKS ADAMS 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 125 

God, to my fellow creatures, and to my own 
soul. I wish my sons to read and to be pene- 
trated as deeply as I have been with the lessons 
of the first Alcibiades." Thus was the founda- 
tion of the character of Charles Francis Adams 
laid deep in the eternal elements. That training 
made a diplomat who could not " lie abroad for 
the good of his country." Inestimable, also, was 
the influence exerted upon him by his grand- 
mother, Abigail Adams. Immediately upon his 
return to America in 1817 he was taken to 
Quincy and remained for a time in her keeping. 
An impressive experience was this, which never 
faded from his memory. 

After graduating from Harvard he spent a 
short time at the White House with his parents, 
and then went back to Boston to study law 
under the majestic and deep-browed Webster. 
He matured early ; and fitted, now, to enter 
upon his career, he fortunately found a most 
excellent wife. On September 5, 1829, he was 
married in Medford, at the family residence, to 
Abigail B. Brooks, the youngest child of Peter 
Chardon Brooks, a noted Boston merchant. In 
clear energy of soul she was, indeed, a second 
Abigail Adams. Queenly above most who adorn 
thrones, vivacious, strongly individual in charac- 
ter, sympathetic, and of quick discernment, she 
augmented every noble quality of her husband, 
and was a wise and devoted mother to her chil- 



126 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

dren. Again the Adams race is indebted to the 
spindle side, in no small measure, for the steady 
continuance and possible expansion of its physical 
and mental vigor. 

Overshadowed deeply was Charles F. Adams 
at first by that astounding career of his father 
in the national House of Representatives. And 
behind '^ the old man eloquent " was the tower- 
ing presence of the supreme advocate of Inde- 
pendence. Surely it was no easy task for the 
young man to live up to his name, made famous 
by two such master spirits ! Furthermore, he 
was modest and sensitive in a marked degree ; 
so, to emerge from the shadow and develop 
from his own main roots such surpassing flower 
and fruitage is convincing evidence of his genu- 
ine abilities and force of character. What was 
in him of worth gradually began to show itself 
through virile articles in the magazines, through 
fearless editorials in a pure-politics newspaper he 
edited, and through five faithful years in the 
State legislature. Independent as either of his 
predecessors, he was, for an Adams, wonderfully 
reposeful in his sustained strength. Indeed, he 
was the first of his line to dispense with invec- 
tive, and to debate great matters in calm speech ; 
nevertheless in the deep elements of his char- 
acter there is plainly discernible the familiar 
ethical passion. It is visible in his contempt for 
shams, in his reverence for justice, in his reli- 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 127 

ance upon " the laws of sublimer range, whose 
home is the pure ether, whose origin is God 
alone." Naturally he is with the " conscience " 
Whigs when the Anti-slavery agitation begins to 
stir the North, and is numbered with the few 
choice spirits, Charles Sumner and the rest, who 
were the nucleus of the Eepublican party of 
Massachusetts and perhaps of the country. Nomi- 
nated Vice-President by the Free-Soil party in 
1848, his is the strength of its slogan, " Adams 
and Liberty." Thus through the sifting for the 
inevitable conflict he finds his way as if by di- 
vine appointment to the firing line at the open- 
ing of the mighty battle for the Union. 

Fortunately for the nation he is there in Con- 
gress in the anxious days of 1860, aiding by his 
constitutional lore and by his astuteness to hold 
the government together in the perilous inter- 
regnum between Lincoln's election and inaugu- 
ration, when all things were out of joint and 
falling apart. Doubly fortunate is it that he 
was there, conspicuously at the fore, when the 
fittest man was urgently called for to fight the 
battle of diplomacy at the Court of St. James. 

As we now clearly see, he was the one man 
adapted by temperament and training to be our 
minister to England in that fearful crisis. He 
knew England, — he got part of his education 
there, — and from father and grandfather he had 
early imbibed all the inside facts of America's 



128 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

relations with that nation. Then, also, as C. F. 
Adams, the younger, points out, he was in his 
solid quahties Anglo-Saxon himself, and by these, 
— self-control, high courage, frankness and fair- 
ness, — he won the esteem of Lord Russell, with 
whom he had chiefly to do. An auspicious 
equipment was this for a position most peril- 
ously abounding in points of friction, and in 
which it must be his one aim to prevent con- 
flict. 

At the outset the Confederate States had for 
chief hope the practical aid and possible inter- 
vention of foreign powers, and their plan was 
to " stand off " the Northern States just long 
enough to enable Europe to render the decisive 
verdict in their favor. As fate would have it 
they had fallen upon the opportune moment. 
Napoleon III. was then cherishing his exploita- 
tion of Mexico, and he welcomed, as an ally 
from heaven, the threatened dissolution of the 
Union. Hardly could he restrain himself from 
hastening the process, but it seemed to him so 
inevitable that he concluded to wait upon the 
slower methods of England. And England in 
her ruling classes was against us. For two gen- 
erations officialdom and aristocracy, at every 
mention of the United States, had been prophets 
of evil. The event was justifying their vatici- 
nations, as they were glad to believe, — " the 
great republican bubble in America had burst." 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 129 

Thus, all of Europe that dreaded democracy, or 
was jealous of our growing commerce, or coveted 
our lands, sympathized with the South, and that 
sympathy was concentrated in London. It was 
the storm centre. How appalling was the situa- 
tion Mr. Adams was called upon to face ! Plain 
enough was this made known to him upon the 
very day he landed in England. With unfriendly 
haste — as he was persuaded — the Palmerston- 
Russell administration, through a royal procla- 
mation, had accorded belligerent rights to the 
Confederacy. "The intention of the govern- 
ment," says his son, Mr. Charles F. Adams, 
" undoubtedly was that the question should be 
disposed of — be an accomplished fact — in ad- 
vance of any protests." But he does not agree 
with his father and Secretary Seward that the 
step was taken in an unfriendly spirit or that it 
worked any real prejudice to the Union cause. 
However intended, it was accepted by the Amer- 
ican minister as a portent of the stern character 
of the struggle upon which he was entering. To 
the same effect was the obtrusively cordial recep- 
tion extended to the agents of the Confederacy. 
He found them established as favorites in the 
most fashionable circles, and indulged in familiar 
intercourse by those in power. 

Now began one of the most remarkable diplo- 
matic combats in history. It was Mr. Adams 
against all England in her ruling classes, with a 



130 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

few notable exceptions; against France in the 
ambitions of her emperor ; against whoever and 
whatever in Europe ahgned itself in opposition 
to the experiment of a people's government in 
this western world. These various powers were 
flushed with the hope of victory. Gladstone 
spoke for them when he said, " We may antici- 
pate with certainty the success of the Southern 
States." Undaunted, Mr. Adams brought into 
play his great knowledge of international laws, 
and insisted upon the observance of sti-ict neu- 
trality ; he met the intrigues of the Confederate 
agents with direct and open protestation ; he 
overcame any prejudice which may have been in 
the mind of Lord Russell by his manliness and 
evident sincerity. At once his power began to 
be felt. Mrs. Jefferson Davis has recorded that 
" the astute and watchful ambassador from the 
United States had thus far forestalled every 
effort, and our commissioners were refused inter- 
views with her Majesty's ministers." This was 
only a beginning. The strife over the iron-clads 
was to come. Meanwhile, in a social way, Mr. 
Adams was holding his own. He was treated 
with scant courtesy by the aristocracy, but as 
his son Charles says, " when the Englishman was 
cold and reserved Mr. Adams was a little colder 
and a little more reserved than the Englishman." 
His wife marveled at his forbearance and pa- 
tience ) nevertheless she was his chief support 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 131 

throughout his arduous mission. " To her/' 
writes Dr. WilHam Everett, a nephew, who knew 
intimately her home life in those days, " to her 
not less than to him are the thanks of all her 
countrymen due for maintaining her country's 
honor in the most trying circumstances of Eng- 
lish social life, where the aristocratic sentiment 
was notoriously hostile, with a combination of 
generosity, playfulness, frankness, constancy, 
culture, and dignity, w4iich none but herself, per- 
haps, could have so thoroughly exhibited, to the 
admiration of her new friends in England and 
the profound satisfaction of all Americans." 
That home life and the high character and tact 
of Mr. and Mrs. Adams cemented the loyalty to 
the Union of such men as Cobden, Bright, and 
Forster, and thus was effective in no slight meas- 
ure in averting in 1862 the recognition of the 
Independence of the Confederacy. 

Failing to " rush " the English government, 
the subjects of " King Cotton " now bent all 
their energies to create surreptitiously in England 
a navy to harass the North. It was their last 
chance ; the South pawned the family jewels to 
raise the needed millions, and Mason, Slidell & 
Co. toiled terribly through every subterranean 
channel. Wherever their doings showed on the 
surface they veiled them with the letter of the 
law. The ablest solicitors aided them, and the 
great resources of the shops and the shipyards 



132 WHEKE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

of the Lairds of Liverpool were at their disposaL 
To defeat this enterprise Mr. Adams was per- 
sistent and unremitting in his efforts. In spite 
of all his protestations the Florida and the Ala- 
bama stole to sea under a cloud of legal techni- 
calities, Lord Russell too late admitting that it 
was a " scandal and reproach." " England must 
eventually pay for this," was the warning of Mr. 
Adams, and as ship after ship was destroyed by 
the privateers, he set down the bill of her in- 
debtedness. How Englishmen laughed in deri- 
sion ! But soberly enough they bowed to his 
superior wisdom ten years later at Geneva, and 
paid it to the last dollar. 

Succeeding in this first venture, the Confeder- 
ate agents were stimulated to carry out the more 
darmg one of the iron-clads. Orders were placed 
for the two double-turreted rams, which were 
designed to break the blockade of the Southern 
ports, and to terrorize the cities of the Northern 
seaboard. Should this scheme prove triumphant 
it would be a terrible menace to the Union. 
" It is a matter of life and death to defeat it," 
wrote the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. " Of 
all the insurgent menaces which lowered upon 
us so thickly in September and October," wrote 
Seward, in November of 1862, " there is only 
one that now gives us anxiety ; and that is the 
invasion by iron-clad vessels, which are being 
built for the insurgents by their sympathizers in 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 133 

Enofland." And Jefferson Davis from an inside 
view declared they " would have swept from the 
ocean the commerce of the United States, and 
would have raised the blockade of at least some 
of our ports." 

Mr. Adams early discerned what was going 
forward, — our consul at Liverpool was alert, — 
and began anew his protests. Grimly Captain 
Bulloch, one of the Confederate agents, survey- 
ing his great war-ships, comments that " the 
passionate appeals and strong asseverations of 
Mr. Adams are not surprising." His situation 
was indeed trying. Neutrality laws, it is notori- 
ous, had been interpreted hitherto by the master- 
ful and vigorous English most liberally in their 
own interests. They had invented laws to justify 
such a course, when even the '' ancient and pre- 
scriptive usages of Great Britain," as Canning 
phrased it, in the days of the Chesapeake affair, 
did not go far enough. Now it was maintained, 
among other things, that the " lucrative char- 
acter" of British ship-building was so encour- 
aging " that closer supervision of that industry 
and the exercise of ' due diligence ' in restraint 
of the construction of commerce-destroyers would 
impose on neutrals a ' most burdensome, and, 
indeed, most dangerous ' liability." In putting 
forth such arguments the British government 
felt safe ; no fear of the future was entertained, 
for it cherished a perfect confidence in the 



134 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

eventual triumph of the South. Recklessly the 
Confederacy was given the advantage of every 
doubt. 

Minister Adams had to make a thorough 
study of every aspect of the laws bearing upon 
the case, gather evidence of their infraction from 
our consuls, from spies, from informers, sift it 
carefully, and, repressing the outraged feelings 
of a patriot, present his remonstrances in courte- 
ous, judicious, and convincing form. Yet after 
all this ceaseless and intense labor, no more would 
be effected than to draw from Lord Russell a 
note, saying there was not sufficient evidence 
that the iron-clads were being built for the Con- 
federacy. Agent Bidloch, sheltered behind the 
letter of the law, feels that his enterprise is se- 
cure, and that the law will have to be strained 
to stop the war-vessels. But Mr. Adams is de- 
termined that if need be the laws shall be strained. 
The spirit of them, at the least, is with him. 
Justice shall be done by their exact observance. 
Gradually his indomitable activity and fearless 
protestations press with such force upon the 
government that they are compelled to do some- 
thino". " We beo^in to feel the effects of Mr. 
Adams's representations to Earl Russell," writes 
Bulloch. Yes, and still more was he to feel 
them ! So potent did they grow that a mock 
sale is made of the iron-clads to a mythical agent 
of the Egyptian Khedive. Desperately the South 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 135 

hopes under these colors to get the ships on the 
blue seas. And, in fact, there is some likelihood 
that one of them, nearly fitted out, will escape 
as did the Alabama, on a "trial trip." Once 
again, Mr. Adams firmly calls the attention of 
Lord Russell to the notorious state of things, 
and once again receives for answer the weary 
array of reasons for letting the ships alone. 
What now is to be done? On the level of 
adroit diplomatic notes and solicitors' formalities 
absolutely nothing ! Higher ground than this 
he had always taken, and now, with character- 
istic directness and daring, he briefly expresses 
his regret at the conclusions of her Majesty's 
government, declares it opens " to the insurgents 
free Kberty in this kingdom to execute a pol- 
icy " of what they themselves described as the 
widest pillage, and then penned the sentence 
which since has become so famous, " It would 
be superfluous in me to point out to your lord- 
ship that this is war." Deliberately the words 
are written, but they seem to lift on " the dis- 
tant ground-swell of repressed passion." It was 
enough. This bold and direct appeal to real 
things was sufficient. There was activity now 
on the part of the British government. War 
vessels were placed between the iron-clads and 
the open sea, and they never left their berths 
till they were added, by purchase, to the British 
navy. Thereafter, to the end of the war, there 



136 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

was no strain in the relations of the two coun- 
tries ; they were even cordial. 

Mr. Adams was the Grant of diplomacy, and 
this was his Appomattox. In the simplicity of 
his methods and his character he won the day 
for us. He did not palter in double speech, — 
an official and a private. His art was grand in 
its sincerity. '' Give me/' his father had written, 
reflectively viewing the duplicity of a certain 
diplomatist, — " give me, in every station of life 
and every crisis of affairs, an open and a candid 
mind." It was his son's prayer, too, and golden 
rule of intercourse. Indeed, may it not be said 
that the Adamses, in the three notable periods in 
which they so illustriously served the nation at the 
highest European courts, laid the foundation of 
what is now recog-nized in its directness as dis- 
tinctly American diplomacy ? Talleyrand, in his 
dealings with John Adams, sought to veil his 
mendacity, after his kind, in diplomatic phrases, 
insisting " on the form of civility and decorum, 
from which in their relations with each other 
governments should never depart." For such 
forms and evasions bluff John Adams had an 
utter abhorrence, and when he saw in Talleyrand 
not only falsehood and bribery, but an enemy of 
the United States, he struck him a blow so direct 
and vital that he carried the pain of it to his 
dying day. Bismarck has a name for candor. 
He could be frank, brutally frank, when it served 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 137 

Ills turn ; but the Adamses were daringly and 
unswervingly veracious. When they spoke, they 
spoke as honest men, sound to the core. They 
could be silent, but never sinuous. Their direct- 
ness was like a law of nature. And this candor 
of the Puritan, so congruous with the new, simple 
life of this nation of the common people, has 
become organic. No heritage have we in the 
artful circumlocutions of the Old World, and we 
may fail at times in formal courtesy, but at least 
we are understood. In the simplicity and truth- 
fulness of his diplomacy, may it not be said that 
Secretary Hay in his dealings with China and 
" the powers " continued, in a distinguished man- 
ner, the " grand style " of the " open and candid 
mind " ? 

Mr. Adams was not permitted to retire from 
his post tiU May, 1868. Then England and 
America united to extol his wisdom, judgment, 
and character. It is all summed up in the verdict 
rendered by J. W. Foster in his " Century of 
American Diplomacy : " " No other minister of 
the United States has ever passed through so 
long a period of intense excitement and critical 
responsibility. He displayed diplomatic skill of 
the highest order, and a patriotic spirit unsur- 
passed by his fathers." He returned to Quincy 
for well earned repose, both Mrs. Adams and 
himself minghng unostentatiously in the life of 
the townspeople. From the enjoyment of this 



138 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDEXCE BEGAN 

relaxation he was summoned, in 1871, to under- 
take the erownino^ achievement of his laborious 
days. As arbitrator on the part of the United 
States in the Geneva tribunal, for the adjustment 
of the Alabama Claims, his discretion and deep 
sense of justice, it is not too much to say, were 
paramount in harmonizing discordant elements, 
and in securing the highly satisfactory indemnity. 
As was then said of him, " he performed the 
difficult duty with the impartiality of a jurist, 
and the delicate honor of a gentleman." 

Back once more in Quincy, the leisure at 
last was his to expatiate on its serene delights. 
Through roads and lanes he took his customary 
walks and drives, respectfully greeted by neigh- 
bors, and reviving the memories of kindred and 
friends, so richly associated with almost every 
spot in the ancient town. At church of a Sun- 
day he was regularly seen, "through sunshine and 
through cloudy weather," a reverent worshiper 
in a liberal faith, as all his fathers were. He 
interested himself in the more important events 
of the town ; gave sound advice to the graduates 
of Adams Academy ; served as a director of the 
Mount Wollaston Bank. For serious occupation 
he could be satisfied with nothing less than the 
editing of the twelve volumes of his father's 
stupendous diary. In this ideal repose, accord- 
ing to the Puritan standard, Mrs. Adams par- 
ticipated. She, too, was always in her pew of a 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 139 

Sunday, and graced the part of " Lady Bounti- 
ful " of the town with rare sympathy and dis- 
cretion. For the distressed no appeal to her 
was made in vain. She plied her needle at the 
" Fragment Society " as industriously as Aunt 
Abby Whitney, its president ; and her words of 
kindness and wisest counsel measurably strength- 
ened the moral and intellectual life of the com- 
munity. So they passed the remainder of their 
days, — in Quincy in summer, in Boston in win- 
ter, — always surrounded by friends, always in- 
terested in the living present, always uplifted by 
the love of their numerous children and grand- 
children. Their golden wedding, celebrated at 
this time, seemed but the accentuation of a har- 
vest season of life, glowing with a mild radiance, 
rich in the returns of honorable service. Together 
for so many years, they were not long parted by 
death. Mr. Adams was gathered to his fathers 
November 21, 1886, and Mrs. Adams followed 
him June 6, 1889. 

Rufus Choate, in the fierce political contest of 
1848, when Charles F. Adams was put forward 
by the conscience of the country as the Free-Soil 
candidate for Vice-President, drew a laugh from 
the groundlings by declaring that John Quincy 
Adams was " the last of the Adamses." How 
absolutely time and the event have confuted 
the sneer of the brilliant partisan ! There 
was another Adams. As destiny would have it, 



140 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Charles Francis Adams was the last of his gener- 
ation, but the last of his race, even at this late 
day, who can foresee or wish to presage ? Up to 
this moment it has surpassed, in the continuous 
fame of its successive generations, that of any 
other line or related statesmen in America. For 
a parallel to it we must go to the older civilization 
of England. Illustrious were the Pitts for two 
generations ; eminent the Grenvilles, with whom 
they intermarried, for one generation more. 
These are among the most celebrated instances 
of " hereditary genius," but they do not go be- 
yond what is exhibited by the Adamses. Fa- 
mous have they been for three generations in a 
direct Hue, and still are they vigorous and poten- 
tial in the familiar ethical and intellectual way. 

The late John Quincy Adams, eldest son to 
Charles Francis Adams, was acknowledged by all 
who knew him, to rank high among the ablest 
men of the country. Vigorous, clear-minded, 
ruggedly direct, a leader of men in the force- 
ful elements of his character, he could have dis- 
tinguished himself in any great administrative 
position ; had the task been his, might, indeed, 
have piloted his State or the nation through 
stormiest waters. A man of action, his destiny 
seemed thwarted by a too delicate regard for the 
public initiative, and an independence unyielding 
to the seduction of political managers. What- 
ever the cause, the feeling was widespread that 



f l^\ 



W»' 





^m*'' 






JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1833-94 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 141 

here was a man, richly endowed by nature, excel- 
ling in the practical wisdom of statecraft, whose 
sagacity and character were urgently needed in 
public affairs, but who was left undisturbed al- 
most to prosecute his private concerns. To be 
sure he represented Quincy in the State legisla- 
ture three years, was thrice nominated for gov- 
ernor, and once for Congress. Perversely it hap- 
pened that his views and principles, tenaciously 
held, did not coincide with those of the major- 
ity of the voters. Late in life he was invited by 
President Cleveland to serve as Secretary of the 
Navy. This, one cannot help thinking, would 
have proved congenial work, — fit, too, for a 
descendant of that President who founded the 
American navy. But his health and absorbing 
private engagements would not permit. The rule 
of his family, never to seek nor to refuse public 
trust, was fated to be broken in this instance. 

Seven sons and daughters were born to Mr. and 
Mrs. Charles Francis Adams : Louisa Catherine, 
who married Charles Kuhn ; John Quincy, who 
married Fanny Cadwallader Crowninshield of 
Boston ; Charles Francis, who married Mary 
Ogden of New York ; Henry, who married Mi- 
riam Hooper ; Arthur, who died in childhood ; 
Mary, who married Dr. Henry P. Quincy ; and 
Brooks, who married Evelyn Davis, daughter of 
Admiral Charles Henry Davis. 

Charles Francis, the second son, has long been 



142 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

held in high esteem for his vital interest in what- 
ever advances the community in which he lives, 
and exalts the true welfare of the nation ; for his 
outspoken and thoughtful judgments on great 
public questions, and for the veracious and schol- 
arly qualities of his historical and biographical 
writings. He served in the Civil War with dis- 
tinction, and was mustered out in 1865 with 
the brevet rank of Brigadier- General. There 
have been lieutenants in his family from the 
beginning, and an unfailing spirit of militant 
patriotism, but he " ranks " all his kindred. 
Nevertheless his civil achievements have been so 
marked, and his leaning to arbitration's huraaner 
methods so decided, to say nothing of his aver- 
sion to titles, that the term " General " has never 
cleaved to him. 

At a critical time in the history of the Union 
Pacific Railway, when trustworthy administra- 
tion of that great corporation was imperatively 
demanded, he was elected its president. Yet, no 
matter how absorbing his business engagements, 
appeals to his public spirit were seldom made in 
vain. He accepted election as a member of the 
Quincy School Committee, where his keen obser- 
vation soon brought him to the conclusion, some 
time before expressed by Dr. Edw^ard Everett 
Hale, that if it were n't for the schools a child 
would stand a chance of getting an education. 
He revolutionized the prevailing methods, reen- 




CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS (The Younger) 



% 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 143 

forcing Colonel Parker — the noted school su- 
perintendent, whom he discovered — in the work 
of establishing the far-famed " Quincy system." 
Liberal were his labors, also, for the Thomas 
Crane Memorial Library. His inteUigent and 
hearty cooperation with the heirs of that son of 
Quincy were chiefly instrumental in securing for 
the town one of architect Richardson's gems. 
In it is stored John Adams's library, and a large 
and choice collection of books made in these 
later years by public appropriations. And not 
unrecognized by the citizens was the assistance 
he lent to Dr. John A. Gordon, Theophilus King, 
Mrs. Annie E. Faxon, and others of the Village 
Improvement Society, in planting trees and erect- 
ing, in the Training Field Square, a magnificent 
granite fountain. 

He is the author of historical and biographical 
writings of first-class importance: the "Three Epi- 
sodes of Massachusetts History," a "Biography 
of Richard Henry Dana," a "History of Quincy," 
the "Life of Charles Francis Adams," his father, 
"Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers," and 
much besides. He is now chiefly engaged upon 
the diary and letters of his father. As a member 
for years of the Metropolitan Park Commission 
he devoted much time to its wise plans. Not 
least among the honors that have come to him, 
and one entirely congenial, is that he is president 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



144 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Professor Henry Adams, now of Washington, 
is author of a " History of the United States " 
which is unsurpassed among the few really great 
works of a similar character written by Ameri- 
cans. Beo^innin<y with the first administration 
of Thomas Jefferson, it veraciously and clearly 
tells the story of the early and rather uncouth 
struggles of the new republic to " find itself " 
in the wild seas vexed by the maelstrom of the 
Napoleonic wars. Reading it, one wonders yet 
again which is the greater, the man who does the 
deed or he who immortalizes it " in prose or 
rhyme." Certainly the " true grandeur " of Amer- 
ica he causes to shine when it was all but invisi- 
ble, in the day that Napoleon contemptuously 
flung out that the United States " has a sort of 
existence," and England plundered our helpless- 
ness with impunity. It was a time to try men's 
souls. And in hardly another chapter of our 
recorded history are the chief actors of the times 
so infallibly judged by their own words and 
deeds. In its calmness and impartiality, its per- 
sonal confessions and documentary proofs, it 
seems like a page from the Egyptian Book of the 
Dead. With the austere presence of their Coun- 
try's Destiny bending over them, they tell, and 
not another for them, of genuine deeds of valor 
or deplorable evasions. Fortunate John Adams ! 
Though seldom mentioned in this work of his 
descendant, his uncommon sense and deep prin- 




CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 2d 




ABIGAIL ADAMS OF TO-DAY 



C. F. ADAMS AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION 145 

ciples are vindicated in their abiding and trans- 
forming power. 

Brooks Adams, youngest of the sons, is also 
distinguishing himself in literature. As from 
time to time articles from his pen appear in the 
magazines, with their wide comprehension of 
modern tendencies, one perceives the innate affin- 
ity of an Adams for public affairs, and the prom- 
ise of yet other scholarly productions. So we come 
to the latest born, Mary, the widow of Dr. Henry 
P. Quincy of Dedham. At the end of days she 
unites once more the two famous families, and is 
the mother of the latest " Dorothy Q." This in 
itself is a distinction. 

In the total number of its eminent members a 
pretty high average is this for any household. 
The virile achievements and potentialities of the 
Adamses are maintained at the same exalted level 
taken when the line emerges into historical im- 
portance. Propitiously it stretches onward to 
yet another generation, the fifth from the first 
President, already adorned by a third Abigail 
Adams, the daughter of the second John Quincy 
Adams. Her brother, a third Charles Francis 
Adams, began his career as the youthful but 
efficient Mayor of Quincy. He is now the Treas- 
urer of Harvard University. Number with these, 
if you will, the promising offspring of the second 
Charles Francis, and, verily, who can discern in 
the distance where the line vanishes, or antici- 



146 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

pate the ultimate service to the nation of an 
Adams ! 

Quincy proudly rejoices in her share of the great 
inheritance of ideal service and love of our land 
which this remarkable family has bequeathed to 
the United States. In a special degree, also, she 
deems herself fortunate in the wise gifts she has 
received from the Adamses. Shortly after the death 
of the first Charles F. Adams his heirs paid out of 
his estate the sum of $10,000 to establish a per- 
manent fund for the maintenance of worship in 
the " Stone Temple," and a little later Charles F. 
Adams, 2d, purchased and gave to Quincy the 
large and beautiful tract of land since named 
Merry-Mount Park. Contemplating these gifts, 
and those given by John Adams and Dr. Wood- 
ward, the public library by the heirs of Thomas 
Crane, the public park by Henry H. Faxon, and 
the hospital by WiUiam B. Rice, Quincy may 
well deem herself fortunate among the cities of 
this country. 



VIII 

THE COLONIAL COLONELS 

With the youthful Edmund Quincy and his 
wife Joanna his race, it may be said, took a new 
start. He was the one man then on this soil 
bearing the name of Quincy, and through whose 
children it was to be transmitted to future gen- 
erations, and he was the first of his name to be 
settled permanently in the home which was des- 
tined to become so famous as the habitation of 
the long line of his descendants. That house, 
the scene of these beginnings, and, with its later 
additions, the setting of so much that was beauti- 
fully valiant in the lives of his kindred, stands 
there visibly testifying to veracious deeds thrill- 
ing with interest beyond the creations of romance. 
It is almost of equal date with our New World 
civilization, to whose marching music and songs 
of triumph its very walls seem vibrant. Stately 
it rises amid ancient elms and dreamful scenes, 
a pleasant and spacious example of the early 
colonial mansion. Picturesque it surely is, and 
humanly interesting, — "that seasoned life of 
man," as Milton says of books, "preserved and 
stored up in " it, — measurably above most his- 



148 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

toric habitations. The original seat of one of 
the most eminent and cultivated of our American 
families, it has been for more than two centuries 
the home of romance and wit, of beauty, of patri- 
otism, and of sublime daring. Statesmen, judges, 
and captains of war were born in it, the " Dorothy 
Q." of Holmes's poem first saw the light in it, 
John Hancock's Dorothy blossomed to woman- 
hood in it, and Sir Harry Vane, quaint Judge 
Sewall, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy 
Adams, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Sir 
Charles Henry Frankland, and many another 
known to fame, have shared the unfailing hos- 
pitality of it. Any house in this new land of 
ours built as early as 1636 by its very age is an 
object of interest, however humble the genera- 
tions w hich fronted the mystery of life within its 
four walls. Involuntarily we muse upon the long 
years through which it has been the scene of all 
that wins our praise or evokes our compassion in 
the ordinary lot of enduring, wistful man. But 
this home of the Quincys sheltered inmates and 
guests who were the first among Americans to 
cherish visions of the emergence here of a noble 
and puissant nation, and foremost among states- 
men to shape and establish it. In that atmos- 
phere of romance and valor which veils every- 
thing associated with the settlement of this coun- 
try and the beginnings of our great republic, it 
looms grand beyond anything presented to the 




u 

Pi 
w 

Q 
►J 
O 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 149 

siofbt. Lowell writes of a house dear to him. it 
gets " to my eye a shape from the souls that in- 
habited it." So alike in clear thought and reso- 
lute daring were the master spirits who through 
eventful years abode under this roof-tree that it 
might well seem to be possessed of a personality, 
continuous, ever-expanding, majestic. 

" Old homes ! Old hearts ! Upon my soul forever 

Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter; 

Like love they touch me, through the years that sever, 
With simple faith ; like friendship draw me after 

The dreamy patience that is theirs forever." 

Edmund, the son of Judith, the first man of 
his family to be the head of this old home, was 
a good type of the Quincys, and through his 
masterful energy rose rapidly in the esteem of 
his fellow-men. His was the quick intelligence 
and i^ncommon sense which have distinguished 
his descendants in every generation. Already in 
all social relations he is meriting that eulogium 
pronounced upon him at the close of his life by 
" Uncle Sewall," " A true New England man, 
and one of oiu* best friends." When widow 
Joanna Hoar died he had been married about 
thirteen years, and was blessed with nine chil- 
dren. These continued to arrive with patriarchal 
promptness every other year, almost, until four- 
teen were born to him. 

It was the age when the " Fruitful Vine " was 
religiously commended, and the command to mul- 



150 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

tiply and replenish the wilderness was conscien- 
tiously obeyed. The element of emulation, it is 
surmised, was not lacking here. Families, for 
the largeness of them, were extolled by preacher 
and poet with manly frankness ; profoundly 
silent, however, were the three, or even four, 
wives in their last resting places. Judge Sewall 
writes of the " charming daughter " of Bridget 
[Hoar] Usher that " her beauty and her fruitful- 
ness joined together render her very amiable." 
Parson Flynt, the brother-in-law of Mr. Quincy, 
had ten children ; Parson Fiske, his minister in 
later life, had sixteen ; Henry Neal, a neighbor, 
had twenty-one ; and Deacon Bass, at his death 
in 1694, had an offspring numbering 162 souls. 
The modern American, fretted and frustrated 
with the care of but one child, profoundly com- 
miserates them. 

Mr. Quincy entered public life on that stage 
which has afforded the earliest training for most 
of New England's greatest statesmen, the town 
meeting. From 1670 onward for ten years or 
more he is a member of the board of selectmen. 
At the same time and later he is called to 
other positions, until he is honored with about 
every place of trust his fellow citizens have to 
bestow. He represents the town in the General 
Court, and he is made captain in the Suffolk 
regiment, — the one military body of the colony, 
— and finally Heutenant-colonel. Thereafter for 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 151 

a hundred years and more there is a " Colonel " 
Quincy, preternatural in his longevity and con- 
tinuous activity. Only an expert antiquarian can 
detect under the title from generation to gen- 
eration the individualities of the several Edmunds 
and Josiahs and John. No Kentucky family can 
show more colonels, or, in this matter of titles, 
more judges. 

Our primal colonel, Edmund, was also among 
the foremost in the colony to effect adjustment 
in the revolution of 1688, when the Stuarts were 
forever banished from the throne of England. 
As the chief citizen of Braintree, he represented 
the town in this affair, and Andros, the Stuart 
governor, being " bound in chains and cords and 
put in a more secure place," he was elected 
to serve as one of the Committee of Safety to 
carry on the government till the charter of Wil- 
liam and Mary should be granted. Like all the 
Quincys in their generations, he is prominent in 
church affairs. He assists in administering the 
" prudentials " of the parish, and when it is pro- 
posed to build a new and larger meeting-house 
farther away from the old centre of the town, 
he is a leader of the opponents of the measure, 
and calls a private gathering at his house, where 
"they did agree among themselves to shingle 
the old house, pretending to be at the whole 
charge themselves." But none the less " several 
pounds were afterwards gathered by a rate upon 
the whole town." 



152 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

In the midst of all this activity and prosperity 
there falls upon him the shadow of a great be- 
reavement : Joanna, the wife of his youth, is 
removed from him by the hand of death. " Mrs. 
Joanna Quinsey," so runs the town record, " the 
wife of Lieut. Edmund Quinsey, died the 16th 
of May, 1680." She had been the heart and 
soul of a large household, crowded with life. 
Four of her children had died before her, but a 
full measure of rejoicing fell to her on the glad 
occasions when the home was thronged with 
kindred and friends to celebrate the marriasfe of 
Mary to Ephraim Savage, and Joanna to Daniel 
Hobart, and Judith to the Rev. John Reyner, 
and Elizabeth to the Rev. Daniel Gookin, and 
Ruth to John Hunt. Later, in 1693, Experience 
married William Savil, and out of the house in 
1682 Daniel married Anna Shepard. The na- 
ture of these wedding festivities may be learned 
from the account of Daniel's marriage (though it 
had a sad ending) in Cambridge, written in his 
diary by Judge Sewall : — 

" Cousin Daniel Quinsey Marries Mrs. Anna 
Shepard Before John Hull, Esq. Sam'l Nowell, 
Esq. and many Persons present, almost Cap- 
tain Brattle's great Hall full ; Capt. B. and Mrs. 
Brattle there for two. Mr. Willard began with 
prayer. Mr. Thomas Shepard concluded ; as he 
was Praying, Cousin Savage, Mother Hull, wife 
and self came in. A good space after, when had 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 153 

eaten Cake and drunk Wine and Beer plenti- 
fully, we were called into the Hall again to sing. 
In singing time Mrs. Brattle goes out, being ill ; 
Most of the Company go away, thinking it a 
qualm or some Fit : But she grows worse, speaks 
not a word, and so dies away in her chair, I 
holding her feet (for she had slipt down). At 
length out of the Kitching we carry the chair, and 
Her in it, into the wedding Hall ; and after a 
while lay the Corpse of the dead Aunt in the 
Bride-Bed ; So that now the strano^eness and 
horror of the thing filled the (just now) joyous 
House with Ejulation ; The Bridegroom and 
Bride lye at Mr. Airs, son-in-law to the deceased, 
going away like Persons put to flight in Battel." 

Great, no doubt, was the grief of Colonel Ed- 
mund Quincy over the death of his wife, but it did 
not prevent the speedy ending of his widowed 
state. His household needed a head for its proper 
governance, and so, with practical promptness, 
seven months after the death of Joanna, he took 
to wife the widow Eliot, daughter of Major Daniel 
Gookin. Three children were born to this union, 
a son who died young, and Edmund and Mary. 

His family thus continuing to enlarge, and his 
affairs to prosper, he greatly improved his farm 
and home lot. Trees were planted, the brook 
was widened, a dam was built, and in 1685 a new 
house was erected. Judge Sewall, under date of 
March 22, 1685-6, enters in his diary, " Lodged 



154 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

in the lower room of tinkle Quinsey's new house.'* 
This was the house, which, up to about ten years 
ago, stood a little to the south of the old mansion, 
and was called " the farm house." It was not 
any larger than the edifice built by Coddington, 
but it could be used more exclusively by the 
family. The old building was now given up to 
the servants, and later to the negro slaves, Jo- 
seph and Tabitha, and Cippio and others, and to 
Psyche, the Indian girl. 

Colonel Quincy enjoyed for twelve years or 
more the ampler accommodations of his estab- 
lishment, and continued to dispense a hospitality 
much resembling that of the squire of old Eng- 
land, and befitting the leading citizen of the town, 
who was at the same time magistrate and a supe- 
rior officer in the militia of the Commonwealth. 
A trifle irascible he grew as he waxed old, a fail- 
ing rather picturesque than repellent in one of 
his dignified bearing, and quite comportable Tvith 
the habit of command acquired in the exercise of 
the fastidious discipline of the training field. At 
a town meeting in 1695, when that old question 
of changing the location of the meeting-house 
was again brought up, we " Voted Hon'rd Col. 
Edmund Quinsey Moderat'r. His Hon'r withdraw- 
ing homewards," however, silent striding, mas- 
sively indignant. The following March meeting 
he appears as moderator for the last time. Then 
in 1697 we hear of his utter breaking down. 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 155 

Judge Sewall writes in his diary under date of 
October 4, " Unkle Quinsey grows exceeding 
crazy." The strong man is brought low ; a few 
months later, January 8, he passes away. "A 
pious and godly man," is the comment of Mr. 
Marshall, who watched with him. The meagre 
town records struggle to express the magnitude 
of the loss : " The worshipful and honored Colo- 
nel Edmand Quinsey, one of his Majesties Jus- 
tices of Peace, died January the seventh Anno 
Dom. 1697-8, anno aetatis suae 70 aut Cariter." 
No ordinary man keeps the records, as may be 
surmised by the display of latinity. " Benjamin 
Thompson, Physician and Schoole Maister," he 
it was ; but he seems to have been wrong in his 
figures, for both Marshall and Sewall write Jan- 
uary 8 as the date of the Colonel's death. " His 
funeral took place four days later ... and he 
was decently buried — three foot companies and 
one troop at his funeral." The pall-bearers 
^^had scarves," and Judge Sewall drove out from 
Boston to be present, picking up Madam Dudley 
on the way (was she really walking from Mil- 
ton?) who "seem'd to be glad of the Invitation 
and were mutually refreshed by our Company." 
Scarcely two years later his widow died. " She 
was sick many weeks and underwent much sor- 
row and dolor; and after all fell asleep quietly in 
the Lord, and was with great solemnity interred 
December 5, 1700." Judge Sewall again goes 



156 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

out from Boston : " Cousin Edmund Quinsey in- 
vited us ; for I lodged there all night." From 
the house to the burying-ground is only half a 
mile, but " because of the Porrige of snow, the 
Bearers rid to the Grave, alighting a little before 
they came there. Mourners, Cous. Edmund and 
his Sister rid first ; then Mrs. Anna Quincy, 
widow, behind Mr. Allen ; and Cousin Ruth 
Hunt behind her husband." 

The " Cousin " Edmund, who with his sister 
follows his mother's remains as chief mourner, 
is now the head of the Quincy household. He 
is only about twenty years old, and in him, once 
again, we have the sole remaining child upon 
whom depends the continuance and promise of 
the Quincy name. Of four sons born into the 
family only Daniel and he lived to maturity. 

This Daniel, the first-born son of Edmund 
Quincy and Joanna Hoar, would not abide at 
home where there were so many mouths to feed, 
and turning his back upon rustic life and peace- 
ful scenes ventured to Boston, where he set up 
for himself as a goldsmith, the banker of those 
days. He took this step, it would appear, im- 
mediately upon his marriage with Anna, or Han- 
nah, Shepard, and in the very year in which 
Edmund was born. In 1689 they were blessed 
with a son whom they named John. The father 
died the following year. This John Quincy in- 
herited, through grandmother Shephard, in 1709, 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 157 

the Mount Wollaston farm, and at once removed 
to Braintree. Here he built him a house and 
took to wife, in 1715, Elizabeth Norton, daughter 
of the Kev. John Norton, of Hingham. He soon 
approved himself a man of genuine power, won 
the respect of his fellow townsmen and fellow 
colonists, became one of the numerous " Col- 
onel Quincys " and " Esquires," moderator of 
town meeting and Representative to the General 
Court. As C. F. Adams, the younger, says, " He 
filled almost every public of&ce to which a native 
born New Englander could, in the colonial days, 
aspire. Colonel in the militia. Speaker of the 
House, Member of the Council, he also nego- 
tiated Indian treaties, and in 1727 the remnant 
of the Punkapog tribe, abused and defrauded, 
petitioned that he might be appointed their 
guardian. . . . Finally, in all positions he ap- 
proved himself a true friend to the interest and 
prosperity of the province ; a zealous advocate 
for, and vigorous defender of, its liberties and 
privileges." 

Singularly enough scarcely a line of his writing 
remains, his grave is unknown, and were it not 
for the painstaking researches of Mr. Adams, 
his public services would be yet awhile buried 
in the obHvion of dry-as-dust documents, and he 
himself almost forgotten. Fortunate is he, how- 
ever, in the perpetuation of his name. " When, 
in 1792, the original town of Braintree was sub- 



158 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

divided, the Rev. Anthony Wibird was requested 
to give a name to the place. He refused to do 
so ; a similar request was made to the Hon. 
Richard Cranch, who recommended its being 
called Quincy, in honor of Col. John Quincy." 
In a yet more living way his name has been 
transmitted to posterity. His only daughter was 
married to the Rev. William Smith of the neigh- 
boring town of Weymouth, and it was Abigail 
Smith, a daughter of this couple, who married 
John Adams. '' In July, 1767, as old John 
Quincy lay dying at Mount Wollaston, this grand- 
daughter of his gave birth to a son ; and when, 
the next day, as was then the practice, the child 
was baptized, its grandmother, who was present 
at its birth, requested that it might be called 
after her father, John Quincy Adams." 

" Cousin" Edmund Quincy, whom we have left 
all this time, was, according to his kind, rapidly 
showing himself a man of worth and valor. The 
first good deed he compassed, to his own last- 
ing advantage, was to marry the lovely Dorothy 
Flynt, and make her the first " Dorothy Q." 
in history, the mother of all the "Dorothy Q.'s" 
who have demurely or stately, or both, ruled us 
from the world of colonial romance. This Dor- 
othy was the daughter of the Rev. Josiah Flynt 
of Dorchester and his wife Margery (Hoar) 
Flynt. So, through a second channel, the sturdy 
strength of the "tribe of Joanna" reenforces 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 159 

the fine faculties of the Quincys, and through 
a first channel the keen intellectual power of 
Teacher Flynt, the heretical minister of the 
Braintree church, fuses with all. Josiah Flynt, 
the father of Dorothy, died 1680, aged thirty- 
five. The widow and her two children, Dorothy 
and Henry, soon afterward removed to Braintree, 
and thus it happened that Edmund Quincy and 
Dorothy Flynt, playmates through long happy 
years, become lovers, and, early in Hfe, were 
united in marriage. Edmund is only twenty at 
this time, 1701 ; his mate is nearly three years 
older. Truly, a youthful couple to take up the 
dignities and responsibilities laid down by the 
"Colonel" and his lady ! However, they quickly 
approve themselves adequate to the high demands 
made upon them. He inherited the houses and 
home lot of his family, and, " more distinguished 
than either his father or his grandfather ... he 
passed nearly his whole life in the public service." 
Once more titles of honor manifest their affinity 
to the Quincy name, and we have another Ed- 
mund, hardly to be distinguished in the matter 
of titles from his father. He is a Captain and 
then a Colonel, an Honorable Representative, a 
Judge of the Superior Court of Judicature, and 
higher things yet. " This great man," said his 
pastor, the Rev. John Hancock, " was of a manly 
Stature and Aspect, of a Strong Constitution and 
of good Courage, fitted for any Business of Life, 



160 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

to serve God, his King, and Country." It is 
endeavored to differentiate him from the other 
Edmunds by calling him " Judge " Quincy, but 
this might be done as effectually, and with war- 
rant too, by naming him " Precentor " Quincy. 
On " May 26, 1723, Major Quincy was fairly 
and clearly chosen by written votes to the office 
of tuning the Psalm in our assemblies for public 
worship." The title would be uncontested, — 
other Quincys might claim distinction for tuning 
town meetings and caucuses ; no one besides has 
ever exhibited enough vocal talent to rival the 
" Judge." 

To one whose " greatness is a-ripening " thus 
early and rapidly, the estabhshment of his fathers 
seems all too small. His family, also, is increas- 
ing at the pace set by the old " Colonel." So he 
ventures to build him a more stately mansion, 
one to meet the requirements of his children's 
children, and which should surpass everything in 
the way of roof-tree that Brain tree had yet seen. 
And there it stands to-day nearly as he planned 
it ! The old house of Coddington, erected in 
1636, taken for her home by Judith Quincy when 
she removed to the wilderness, was incorporated 
in the new structure. That original building 
in all its lines is still to be discerned as plainly, 
almost, as if the newer edifice, with which it aHgns 
and by which it is overtopped, were transparent. 
The old roof, with its shingles, is half a story 



k 




JLDUE EDMUND QUINCY 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 161 

beneath the later one, and the old wmdows and 
clapboards are clearly distinguishable from those 
of the more recent extension. A difference of 
level, also, between the old and the newer floors 
emphasizes the widely separate dates of origin. 
John Marshall, mason and man of all work, was 
one of those employed in the erection of the 
mansion, and in the jottings he made in his diary 
we can almost see the building go up. '^ June 
14, 1706. We raised Mr. Quinsey's house." 
" July 29. I laid the foundation of Mr. Quin- 
zey's chimnies." " Aug. 7. Coulouring the ped- 
ements at Mr. Quinseys most part of the day.'* 
" Sep. 3-7. Every day at Mr. Quinceys about 
the arch." From the size of the chimneys and 
the great stone arches upon which they rest, one 
would imagine they were erected first, and then 
that the house was built around them. But Mr. 
Marshall says first, that " we raised Mr. Quinsey's 
house." And such a raising ! The beams are 
of heaviest oak, and large must have been the 
crew of men to lift them in place. It is likely 
the entire male population made, of that pleasant 
day of June, a holiday. When the new church 
was raised, a few years later, " Bread, Cheese, 
Rum, Sider, and Beer" were furnished freely. 
As generously, no doubt, would Colonel Quincy 
meet the expectations of his robust and thirsty 
neighbors. 

The union of the new building with the old 



162 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

was accomplished by no symphonic architectural 
scheme, but by plain rule of thumb, and so, 
ample spaces are provided for " secret chambers," 
for numerous closets of oddest shapes, for curi- 
ous ship-like lockers, and for similar entrancing 
conveniences, wholly unknown to modern dwell- 
ings. Special attention, however, was given to 
the construction of the buffet in the dining-room, 
which is a veritable work of art. Hospitable 
open fireplaces are in all the rooms, — those in 
parlor and dining-room quaintly tiled, — and 
liberal panels adorn the walls of most of them 
from floor to ceiling. Altogether the mansion 
is an excellent example of the stately homes of 
the colonial gentry. 

In 1822 Miss Eliza Susan Quincy made a 
sketch of the mansion, which in that day was 
just as it was when Colonel Quincy lived in it. 
A copy of this sketch she sent, many years after- 
ward, to Dr. 0. W. Holmes. His acknowledg- 
ment of it was conveyed in the following words : 

My dear Miss Quincy, — Accept my cordial thanks 
for the sketch of the venerable mansion where Dorothy Q., 
now looking down on her descendants from the canvas that 
hangs in my parlor, once lived. It is a most grateful re- 
membrance of our relationship and of your kindness. 
With warmest regards, 

I am faithfully yours, 

O. W. Holmes. 
296 Beacon Street, 
April 3, 1871. 




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THE COLONIAL COLONELS 163 

" Colonel " Quincy, thus comfortably housed 
and delightfully wived, is in a condition to enjoy 
life and pursue his ambitions. The clouds of 
sorrow from the death of father and mother 
have gradually dispersed. Judge Sewall refers 
to all this in the jottings he makes of a jour- 
ney to Plymouth and back in March, 1711-12. 
" Rained very hard, that went into a Barn 
awhile. Baited at Bairsto's. Dined at Cush- 
ing's. Dried my coat and hat at both places. 
By the time got to Braintry, the day and I were 
in a manner spent, and I turned in to Cousin 
Quinsey, where I had the pleasure to see God in 
his Providence shining again upon the persons 
and affairs of the Family after long distressing 
sickness and Losses. Lodg'd in the chamber 
next the Brooke." Whoever has lodged in that 
chamber, the one in the northwest corner of the 
second story, will not be likely to forget the 
brook, especially after a very hard rain. How 
restful the soft flowing of it, how musical the 
song of its fall, now rising, now dying away, 
with the wafting of the wind, and through all 
its changes mingling with the daydreams that 
melt into dreams of the night, and then vanish- 
ing as deep sleep falls upon the tired frame ! 
The Judge could not fail to remember the 
brook. 

Later another chamber, still nearer the brook, 
was provided for the celebrated Tutor Flynt, in 



164 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPEXDEXCE BEGAN 

the L Avliicli Colonel Quiney generously erected 
for that gentleman's accommodation. He was 
the only brother of Dame Dorothy, a predestmed 
bachelor, scholarly, original, and widely famed 
in the prosy New England of that day as a wit. 
For over half a century he was a tutor at Har- 
vard. This retreat was provided for him in 
Braintree, where he might rest from college du- 
ties and come under the thoughtful ministra- 
tions of his loving sister. She bought clothing 
for him, compounded for his illness a " sutle 
physick," and otherwise tried to mitigate the 
ineptitudes of "single blessedness." At times 
he fell into what he describes as " a hypocondial 
disorder ; " and on the floor of his study at the 
mansion, tradition points out a depression worn 
by him as he walked forward and back in black, 
restless mood. 

An event of the first importance soon conse- 
crated Cousin Quincy's new Lome. " Dorothy 
Q.," "my Dorothy," as Dr. Holmes calls her, 
was born into it January 4, 1709. She was the 
fourth child. Before her were born Edmund, 
who married Elizabeth Wendell, and Ehzabeth, 
who married John Wendell ; a curious intermix- 
ture of names, but a felicitous union of two 
noble households. So early were they married 
that Dorothy was left at fifteen the main reli- 
ance of her mother in the multifarious duties of 
an increasing domestic establishment. And very 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 165 

exemplary was she, in a day when children were 
expected to be ideally pious, obedient, and in- 
dustrious. "My child," wrote her father, "you 
are peculiarly favored among your friends in 
these parts in having a good word spoken of 
you, and good wishes made for you, by every- 
body." A hint of her domesticity comes down 
to us in the tradition that she used to dry her 
laces on the "formal box," — still flourishing, 
the wayward growths of two centuries, — which 
edged the trim flower garden. This ancient box- 
wood, and Dorothy's fondness for the garden 
It bordered, reminds one of another queen, hap- 
less Mary Stuart of Scotland, who, as Dr. Brown 
tells us, had at Holyrood her favorite "little 
walk and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves 
for three hundred years." 

Dorothy, as she appears in the portrait which 
Dr. Holmes has made famous, is the helpful and 
afPectionate girl of fifteen her father describes. 
Willing, thoughtful, sympathetic, her nature in- 
vites the perplexed and needy, and all the wealth 
of it is lavished upon them. Grandmother Flynt, 
growing old gracefully in this inclusive house- 
hold, would be a loved charge; her mother's 
cares she would divide, and nephews and nieces 
she would pet and spoil with all her heart. Thus 
engaged she was well on her way to become that 
tender, solicitous, supplemental providence, an 
old maid aunt, when, at the age of twenty-nine, 



166 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

she herself was taken possession of and loved 
and protected by Edward Jackson, Esq., of Bos- 
ton. Their daughter Mary married Judge Oliver 
Wendell in 1762, and their daughter, in the next 
generation, married the Rev. Abiel Holmes, father 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" What if a hundred years ago 
Those close-shut lips had answered No, 
When forth the tremulous question came 
That cost the maiden her Norman name ? " 

It was a contingency not at all improbable, — 
just then. For it was not till a swift and tragic 
series of events had stricken from her hand its 
chief duties that she gave it to her lover. On 
the 26th of July, 1737, grandmother Flynt, at 
the good old age of ninety, passed away. Then, 
suddenly, on the 29th day of the next month, 
her mother expired. Her father, about this 
time, was deeply engaged in making prepara- 
tions for a voyage to England, to defend before 
the King the cause of Massachusetts in the 
boundary dispute between that colony and New 
Hampshire. This duty could not be deferred, 
'' being satisfied of the clearness of my call, I 
dare not refuse the same," and with the dolor of 
bitter affliction burdening his heart he departed 
for London, where he fell an easy victim to in- 
oculation for the small-pox. He was buried in 
Bunhill Fields, where reposes the dust of Bun- 
yan \ and the General Court of Massachusetts 



THE COLOMAL COLONELS 167 

caused a monument to be erected to him as a last- 
ing memorial that " he departed the delight of 
his own people, but of none more than the Sen- 
ate, who, as a testimony of their love and grati- 
tude have ordered this epitaph to be inscribed." 
News traveled slowly in those days. Judge 
Quincy died in February, but it was not until 
about April that Boston and Braintree heard of 
the catastrophe. On the 23d of that month 
pubhc services were held in the new meeting- 
house on the training field. The SufPolk regi- 
ment was there, the judges, the Representatives, 
the governor, and other provincial dignitaries. 
From the mansion came the train of mourners, 
the first of kin leading, — Edmund, and Eliza- 
beth, and Dorothy, and Josiah. The Rev. John 
Hancock, father of the signer of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, is pastor, and preaches a 
sermon upon " The Instability of Human Great- 
ness." The heart of the good man is heavily 
oppressed with the weight of woe that has fallen 
upon dear friends and the community. Turning 
to the mourners, and speaking to them in the 
direct fashion peculiar to that age, he said, " I 
must confess, my dear afflicted Friends, that the 
Conduct of Divine Providence toward your Family 
in the Course of the last year hath been uncommon 
and unaccountable. The blessed God hath seen 
meet to break you with Breach upon Breach, 
first in the Death of your pious grandmother 



168 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Flynt in a good old age, and then in the sudden 
Decease of your virtuous Mother. The Provi- 
dence of God hastened her reward of the pious 
care of her aged Parent. For as soon as she 
had committed her precious Remains to the 
Dust, and set her House in Order, she finished 
her Work, undresses and dies. All this seem'd 
to prepare the way for the Departure of your 
honoured Father into our Mother Country in the 
Public Service of this Province, when the time 
of his Departure to a better World was at Hand ; 
and there it seemed good in the sight of God to 
put a Period to his useful Life." 

Thus in a brief period an entire generation 
was swept away. So complete and unexpected 
was the calamity that the mansion, it would 
seem, was left for a time without a tenant. 
Dorothy, to be sure, remained its mistress till 
her marriage, about a year afterward. Who 
then, if any one, kept the hearth-fire ablaze, it 
is difficult to surmise. Edmund, the first-born, 
to whom it was bequeathed, was living in Bos- 
ton, deep in mercantile affairs. Josiah, the other 
son, had accompanied his father to England, and 
afterwards visited that country and the continent 
more than once. When he settled down he mar- 
ried Hannah Sturgis, in 1733, and then he took 
a house in Boston, on Washington Street, the 
garden of which adjoined his brother's house, 
which fronted on Summer Street. They and 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 169 

brother-in-law Edward Jackson were partners in 
commerce and ship-building. If much of their 
business was as prosperous and exciting as one 
adventure which history relates, it is not to be 
wondered at that Braintree was negflected. 

One of their ships, the Bethell, voyaging from 
the Mediterranean in 1748, at a time when Eng- 
land was at war with Spain, fell in at nightfall 
with a vessel of greatly superior force flying the 
Spanish colors. Escape was out of the ques- 
tion, and the captain, putting a bold face to a 
bad business, summoned the enemy to surrender. 
To enforce his demand with the best show, six 
Quaker guns, which formed part of her arma- 
ment, were placed to look as formidable as the 
fourteen good guns ; lanterns were hung in the 
rigging, together with all the hats and coats the 
sailors' chests afforded. " The Spanish captain," 
writes Edmund Quincy in the " Life of Josiah 
Quincy," " after some demur and parley, taking 
the Bethell for an English sloop of war, struck 
his colors, and gave up his ship without firing a 
gun. His rage and that of his crew on discover- 
ing the stratagem to which they had fallen vic- 
tims, was infinite, but unavailing. The gallant 
captain of the Bethell, Isaac Freeman, whose 
name certainly deserves to be preserved, says in 
his letter to his owners, ' At Daylight we had 
the last of the Prisoners secured, who were ready 
to hang themselves for submitting, when they 



170 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

saw our Strength, having only fourteen Guns, 
besides six wooden ones ; and you may easily 
imagine we had Care and Trouble enough with 
them till they were landed at Fayal.' The Jesus 
Maria and Joseph was a ' register ship/ bound 
from Havana to Cadiz, with one hundred and 
ten men and twenty-six guns ; while the Bethell 
had but thirty-seven men and fourteen guns. 
Her cargo consisted of one hundred and sixty-one 
chests of silver, and two of gold, registered, be- 
sides cochineal and other valuable commodities. 
The prize was brought safely into Boston, duly 
condemned, and the proceeds distributed. My 
great-aunt, Mrs. Hannah Storer, Mr. Quincy's 
daughter, who died in 1826, at ninety, used to 
describe the sensation this event caused in Bos- 
ton ; and how the chests of doubloons and dollars 
were escorted through the streets, by sailors armed 
with pistols and cutlasses, to her father's house, 
at the corner of what is now Central Court and 
Washington Street, where they were deposited in 
the wine cellar, and guard mounted over them 
by day and night while they remained there." 

Braintree profited by this extraordinary piece 
of good fortune. Josiah, though but forty years 
old, retired from business, made his home in the 
Hancock parsonage, and, like his father, became 
colonel of the Suffolk regiment and active in 
public affairs. Naturally, also, his fellow towns- 
men, when in need of funds to meet the extraor- 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 171 

dinary expenditures incident to the Revolution, 
waited on " Colonel Quincy to know of him 
whether he will lend the Town a sum of hard 
money." 

Edmund, the elder brother, also retii-ed to 
Braintree, but not with flags flying. He was the 
parson of all the generations of the Quincys, 
gentle, reflective, benevolent, and — unpractical. 
His share of the prize money went into unfortu- 
nate business speculations, and he resorted to 
the ancestral acres to recover himself by farming. 
By this time nine children had been born to 
him, the last of them Dorothy, — Hancock's 
Dorothy, — who first saw the light in the Sum- 
mer Street home. May 10, 1747. It could not 
have been long after this event — long enough, 
however, to celebrate the marriage of his second 
son, Henry, "the handsomest man in Boston," 
to Mary Salter, in 1749 — that he removed with 
his family into the old mansion of his birth. In 
1753 he is appointed on a committee to divide 
the Braintree lands ; later he serves as modera- 
tor of town meeting. He is called Squire, but 
never Colonel, — the one man of his race, al- 
most, who has failed to receive this title. 

All of the Quincy name, with the exception of 
Henry, are once more in Braintree, their ances- 
tral town ; and interest in the mansion, the home 
of their fathers, culminates. The Revolution 
dawns, stormily red, its heroes appear upon tlie 



172 WHERE AJMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

scene, and the queenly Abigail Adams and the ro- 
mantic Dorothy are regnant in visions of light and 
loveliness. Thronged seems the mansion with its 
inmates and its guests, — young men and women, 
vivacious, aspiring, a trifle formal (as was then 
the vogue), but thoroughly human. Three sons 
are at home : Edmund, who married Ann Hurst ; 
Abraham, who was swept from the deck of a 
sloop by its boom and drowned off Germantown ; 
and Jacob, who married Elizabeth Williams. 
There are five daughters, all " remarkable for 
their beauty," who, when they first enter the 
mansion, are none of them engaged. Then across 
the way, in the Hancock parsonage, are the three 
sons of Josiah — Edmund, Samuel, and Josiah 
— and his one daughter, the adorable Hannah. 
Is it any wonder that the young men from the 
other parts of the town, and from Dorchester and 
Boston, find much to interest them at Squire 
Quincy's ? John Adams is a frequent visitor. 
He writes of an evening spent here " with Mr. 
Wibird (the minister) and cousin Zab (Rev. Zab- 
diel Adams), when Mr. Quincy told a remarkable 
instance of Mr. Benjamin Franklin's activity and 
resolution to improve the products of his ow^n 
country." Drinking tea at the mansion, on one 
occasion when he visited Braintree, Franklin 
commended the Rhenish grape, and offered to 
supply cuttings, which he did, at some trouble to 
himself, a few months later. But no one seri- 




EDMUND QUINCY, 1703-88 




ELIZABETH (WENDELL) QUINCY 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 173 

ously thinks that the strenuous young lawyer, 
John Adams, was really attracted to the mansion 
by minister Wibird, that " inanimate old bach- 
elor," as Abigail Adams called him in stirring 
Revolutionary days, or by Squire Quincy and his 
talk upon farm products. As his diary reveals, 
he was drawn there by the " pert and sprightly 
Esther " and her sisters. But, however witching 
Esther may be, " she thinks and reads much less 
than Hannah Quincy" over in the parsonage; so 
to her he turns, and was in utmost peril of becom- 
ing engaged to her. The future President out 
of the way. Dr. Bela Lincoln, a younger brother 
of Major-General Benjamin Lincoln of Hingham, 
with more of heart, faces the peril, and is lost. 
Then Jonathan Sewall, the intimate friend of 
John Adams, " who called him his Jonathan, and 
wished his own name had been David," succumbs 
to the " pert " Esther. Gravely John Adams 
sets it down in his diary that SewalFs " court- 
ship of Esther Quincy brought him to Braintree 
commonly on Saturdays, where he remained till 
Monday." As Samuel Sewall, about the same 
time, was carrying on a courtship with Elizabeth, 
and William Greenleaf with Sarah, a profane 
curiosity is awakened as to the apportionment of 
the remaining days of the week. Merry must 
life have been in the old mansion at this time ! 
For every suitor who triumphed there were, most 
likely, two or three others who aspired. These, 



174 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

with other young people from neighbor Vassall's 
and Brackett's and SaviFs, and many a house 
besides, must have flooded Squire Quincy's home 
with life and laughter. Then, too, at this period, 
and earlier, as tradition tells, there were joyous 
parties from Boston, " our metropolis," graced, 
some of them, with the knightly Sir Henry Frank- 
land and his lovely Agnes Surriage, 

" With far-off splendors of the Throne 
And glimmerings from the Crown." 

If '' Agnes and the Knight " were of a merry 
party trooping out from Boston in coaches and 
on horseback, it may have been in the summer 
of 1746, before she was made Lady Frankland, 
and on the occasion when the heroes of Louis- 
burg, Admiral Peter Warren and General Wil- 
liam Pepperell, w^re being feted. Squire Quincy 
was then in good circumstances, and using the 
mansion, it is surmised, for his summer home. 
Later, on November 30, 1756, he writes from 
Braintree to Sir Harry excusing himself for 
neglecting to congratulate him in person on his 
remarkable rescue by Agnes from the ruins of 
Lisbon at the time of the earthquake : " As ye 
unhap. situation of my affairs has dep'd me of ye 
satisfaction of long since waiting upon yourself 
and lady & personally congratulating your safe 
& happy return into this prov. after so remark- 
able a protection wh ye G't author & preserver 
of all things was pleas'd to afford you at Lisbon, 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 175 

on ye never to be forgotten lOtli of Nov. last, 
I hope yr goodness will excuse an epistolary ten- 
der of my sincerest compliments on ye pleasing 
occasion." With the note he sends, in " testi- 
mony of my respect & gratitude ... a trifling 
collection of some of ye fruits of ye season pro- 
duced on ye place of my birth." Were there 
among them pears "from the tree in the Back 
Garden " of which he writes in 1757, and which 
is still to be seen, so says tradition, in the hollow 
and almost branchless trunk at the rear of the 
mansion ? But whether or not Sir Harry and 
the skipper's fair daughter ever made Squire 
Quincy's routs more piquant by their presence, 
wit and beauty thronged there. 

*' And judges grave, and colonels grand, 
Fair dames and stately men. 
The mighty people of the land, 
The ' World ' of there and then." 

And Dorothy, the youngest of the children, 
saw them all, and was, while young, petted by 
them all, and in this stimulating atmosphere 
grew up to womanhood. No wonder there is 
discoverable in her temper a flavor of imperial- 
ism and a suspicion of the coquette. Judged by 
any standard, she was not the least beautiful of 
the five fair daughters of the mansion, and quite 
early enough had her share of admirers. When 
it was that she became the object of the serious 
regard of any of them we have no means of 



176 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

knowing. John Hancock, born in the parsonage 
close by, some ten years before her, had been 
adopted by his wealthy uncle of Boston, and was 
an inmate of the Hancock mansion there. But 
he w^as on intimate terms with the Quincys, and 
no doubt visited them frequently. He could not 
fail to note the unfolding loveliness of the young- 
est of them, and, in his masterful fashion, early 
to pay her the devotion of the ascendant lover. 
Tradition says that the Eevolution was afar off 
and the mansion still her home when she and 
Hancock plighted troth. Indeed, it is averred 
that all plans were made to celebrate the wedding 
in the home of her fathers. The laro^e north 
parlor was adorned with a new wall paper express 
from Paris, and appropriately figured w^ith the 
forms of Venus and Cupid in blue, and pendant 
wreaths of fl owners in red. And there to this 
day hangs the paper on the walls, unfading in its 
antiquity ! But before the happy day arrived the 
Revolution broke out, families were dispersed, and 
in Boston and its neijyhborhood chaos reie^ned. 
The Quincy family, in a measure, was divided 
against itself. Squire Quincy was a fervent patriot, 
and his children were as devoted as himself to 
the cause of the colonies. Judge Jonathan Sew^all, 
his son-in-law, however, sided with the Crown, as 
did Samuel Quincy, the son of his brother Josiah. 
It was a sorrow w4iich the brothers carried to 
their graves. For our Edmund, the owner of 




COL. JOSIAH QUINCy, 1709-84 




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THE COLONIAL COLONELS 177 

the mansion, there was at this time a yet deeper 
sorrow in the death of his beloved wife, EUzabeth 
Wendell. 

Sadly broken up and dispersed now is the 
family which had filled the mansion with life 
and merriment. Dorothy and her father are in 
Boston during the memorable winter of 1774-5, 
Madam Lydia Hancock exercising a loving guard- 
ianship over her nephew's betrothed. And when 
Hancock — fearing arrest — finds refuge in the 
Lexington parsonage where his father was born, 
Madam Hancock, with Dorothy in charge, takes 
coach and joins him there on the 18th of April. 
Sam Adams is there also. At midnight they 
are aroused by the swift summons of Paul Re- 
vere. The red-coats are coming ! Hancock and 
Adams are induced to seek safety in Woburn ; 
Dorothy and Madam Hancock remain under the 
care of parson Clark. From the shelter of the 
parsonage they witness the swift gathering of 
the minute-men, the arrival of the regulars, their 
murderous volleying, and the dispersion of the 
colonists. Then, when the regulars resume their 
march for Concord, the ladies are hastily driven 
to Woburn, where they are reunited to the pa- 
triots. From here Hancock accompanies the 
ladies to Worcester ; thence continuing on, they 
find a resting place in the home of Thaddeus 
Burr in Fairfield, Connecticut. In this town, a 
few months later, on August 28, 1775, John 



178 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN j 

Hancock and Dorothy Quincy are united in 
marriage. 

Upon the evacuation of Boston by the British, 
Edmund Quincy returned from Lancaster, where 
he had found safety with his son-in-law, General 
Greenleaf . Never again, however, did he make 
his home in Brain tree. His last days were spent 
with his granddaughter, Mrs. Mary Donnison, 
daughter of Henry Quincy, who Hved at the cor- 
ner of Washington and Winter streets in Boston. 

Josiah, the brother of Edmund, continued to 
live in Brain tree. In 1752 he entered into part- 
nership with General Palmer, and established the 
first glass works in America on a peninsula in 
Quincy, which, from a colony of Germans they 
employed as workmen, received the name of Ger- 
mantown. This enterprise, together with some 
spermaceti works, was terminated by the Revo- 
lutionary War. In 1755 he was appointed by 
Governor Shirley on a commission with Thomas 
Pownall to solicit the colony of Pennsylvania to 
unite with Massachusetts in sending an expedi- 
tion to erect a fortress near Ticonderos^a. While 
at Philadelphia he formed a lasting friendship 
with Benjamin Franklin, who, whenever he came 
to Boston, always visited Colonel Quincy at 
Brain tree. 

The Hancock parsonage, which Josiah occupied 
during bachelor Wibird's ministry, was destroyed 
by fire in 1759, and in 1770 he built him the 




SAMUEL QUINCY, THE TORY 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 179 

later Quincy mansion, about a mile north of the 
old mansion, on the three hundred acres left him 
by his father. Here he lived during the whole 
of the war, strong in his faith in his country, wise 
in his counsel to his fellow patriots and their 
leaders. Sturdily he stood by his home, " though 
the ladies of his family, at times of special danger, 
would take refuge with Mrs. (John) Adams in 
the modest farmhouse at the foot of Penn's Hill, 
where Mr. Adams was born." On October 17, 
1775, he had the satisfaction of seeing from an 
upper window the British sail out of the harbor, 
" of which fact he made a record with his rino- 
on one of the panes of glass, yet extant." He 
died March 3, 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of 
his age, of a cold caught while sitting on a cake 
of ice in the bitter winter weather watching for 
wild ducks. He was the last of the " colonial 
Colonels." 

He had three sons, whose early promise of great 
abilities warranted the anticipation that the Qumcy 
name would be more firmly established and still 
more highly exalted. But Edmund, a merchant, 
enterprising, ingenious, and manly, died at the 
age of thirty-five ; and Samuel, who rose to be 
solicitor-general of the province under the Crown, 
became a violent loyalist, and went to England 
at the evacuation of Boston. The third son, 
Josiah Quincy, Jr., thus became the hope of the 
family, the one upon whom the sorrowing old 



180 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Colonel centred his affections. It should be 
noted, however, that Samuel did not pass into 
oblivion nor did his descendants lose their affec- 
tion for America. He lived and died as crown 
attorney for the island of Antigua, but his son 
Samuel graduated from Harvard and practiced 
law at Lenox until his death in 1816. His son, 
another Samuel, became a noted Bostonian. He 
married Mary Hatch, and, after she passed away, 
Abigail Adams Beale, neighbor to the Adamses 
in Quincy. Eight children were born to him : 
three by his second wife, — Abby, Josiah, and 
Elizabeth, who married E. H. Mills Huntington. 
Josiah Quincy, Jr., was born February 23, 
1744. The rudiments of a classical education 
he obtained in Brain tree under the tuition of 
Joseph Marsh, son of the minister, who also 
had the honor of preparing John Adams for 
his college career. Intimately were Josiah and 
John and Samuel associated in their earHer days. 
Too^ether Samuel and John were admitted to 
the Boston bar, and most dramatically were all 
three connected in the trial of Captain Preston 
for the " Boston Massacre." Samuel opened 
the case for the crown ; Josiah and John fol- 
lowed, pleading for the British officer. Colonel 
Quincy, amazed, sternly rebuked Josiah for 
undertakino; the defense " of those criminals 
charged with the murder of their fellow citi- 
zens." Memorable is his reply : " To inquire 




JOSIAH QUINCY, JR. 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 181 

my duty and do it is my sole aim." This Boston 
Cicero, as John Adams called him, threw himself 
with all his pure ideals and fervent passions into 
the patriots' cause, and from the beginnino- of 
his career was freely admitted to the counsels of 
his elders. " He was one of the first that said, 
in plain terms, that an appeal to arms was inevi- 
table, and a separation from the mother country 
the only security for the future." When the 
relations between the colonies and the mother 
country became more strained, and it was felt to 
be important that some one should represent the 
patriot party in England, he was the one to vol- 
unteer his services. Too zealously he performed 
this duty, for he undermined a constitution not 
at all robust. He set sail on his return voyage 
in March, 1775, but, delayed by baffling winds, he 
did not have strength enough to survive it. He 
lay dying off Marblehead, praying, as he caught 
sight of land, for one hour with his fellow patriots, 
Sam Adams and Joseph Warren. Well has he 
been called " the Patriot," for he fell a martyr 
to American liberty as truly as did any wdio sur- 
rendered their lives at Lexington or Bunker Hill. 
" May the spirit of liberty rest upon him ! " 
are the words with which Josiah Quincy, Jr., 
ended a slight bequest of great books to his son. 
That son, another Josiah, destined to surpass all 
of his name in the length, and perhaps the mag- 
nitude, of his services to his country, was at the 



182 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

time of his father's death Httle more than a child. 
He was born in Boston February 4, 1772. With 
his mother he fled from Boston about the hour 
when the battle of Lexington was raging, to take 
refuge, under the guidance of William Phillips, 
Mrs. Quincy's father, in the distant town of Nor- 
wich, Connecticut. It was here the mother heard 
of the expected arrival of her husband at Glou- 
cester. Leaving her son with her father's people, 
she hurried to meet him, and all her glad antici- 
pations were submerged in the waves of sorrow 
which met her. " She proceeded immediately to 
Braintree to share her grief with the sorrowing 
household there. On arriving she found the 
family scattered. An alarm of a boat attack had 
caused the ladies to take refuge with Mrs. Adams 
at the foot of Penn's Hill, whither Mrs. Quincy 
went without delay, and received all the consola- 
tion and support that sympathy, affection, and 
friendship could afford." 

The little Josiah — he was the third of the 
name — was sent to Phillips Academy and to Har- 
vard, where he did not fail to distinguish him- 
self. Then he filled the measure of his mother's 
happiness by settling down with her in Boston ; 
a happiness which overflowed when he brought 
home, in 1797, Eliza Susan Morton, his wife. 
Thenceforward his advancement was as continu- 
ous as a " man of destiny." Volumes have been 
written about the career and achievements of 




PRESIDENT JOSIAH QUINCY 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 183 

this statesman and orator, and volumes remain 
to be written. A State senator ; a member of 
Congress, attaining leadership of the Federal 
party ; mayor of Boston for six years, earning 
the title of " Great Mayor ; " president of Har- 
vard for sixteen years; meanwhile writing his 
history of Boston, of the Boston Athenaeum, of 
Harvard, and biographies of his father and of 
John Quiney Adams. Truly a busy life, yet a 
serene one, " compacted of Roman and Puritan 
virtues." His summers he spent in Quiney, and 
there, on the first day of July, 1864, " as quietly 
as an infant sinks to slumber he ceased to 
breathe." His long and honorable life, begin- 
ning before the Revolution, almost outlasted the 
war for the Union. In his latter days he visited 
annually the older Quiney mansion, the original 
home of his race, and delighted in all the great 
memories it called up. 

How full these Quiney homes are of patriotic 
recollections ! In the mansion in which he passed 
away, President Quiney entertained Lafayette and 
frequently welcomed both Adamses, Daniel Web- 
ster, and other celebrated Americans. In 1812 the 
watchers from its windows were thrown into a 
state of excitement bv the entrance into the har- 
bor of the old Constitution after her capture 
of the Guerriere. A few days later the heroes, 
Hull and Decatur, breakfasted at the mansion. 
Josiah, the fourth of the name, then a child, 



184 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

sat on Decatur's knee, playing with liis dirk and 
looking up into his handsome face. 

In what pei'})lexing profusion the Josiahs and 
the Edmunds have been sprinkled by the Quincy 
family over the pages of history ! This fourth 
Josiah was one of the sons of President Quincy. 
He was an important man in his day, — a typi- 
cal Bostonian, without whom no public function 
was quite complete, thrice mayor, a railroad man 
with ideas of expansion in advance of his time, 
and founder of the cooperative banks so help- 
ful to the workmen of Massachusetts. In his 
later years he lived altogether in Quincy, a mem- 
ber of that delightful household which included 
his three unmarried sisters, Eliza Susan, Abby 
Phillips, and Sophia M. How pleasant are the 
reminiscences of the gracious hospitalities of that 
home, with its old-time atmosphere, its anecdotes 
of the great men of the past, and its commendation 
of Jane Austen's " Emma " and similar books ! 

Another son of the president was Edmund, 
who lived in Dedham. He was a strong^ anti- 
slavery man, effectively assisting the cause by 
his fearless and frequent editorials. Many writ- 
ings besides flowed from his ready pen : " The 
Haunted Adjutant, and other Stories," " Wens- 
ley, and other Stories," etc. His son. Dr. Henry 
Quincy of Dedham, recently passed away. The 
married daughters of President Quincy are Mrs. 
Robert Waterston and Mrs. B. D. Greene. 



THE COLOXIAL COLONELS 185 

In the next ofeneration the children of the 
fourth Josiah are Josiah Phillips, Samuel M., and 
Mrs. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. In Samuel was 
revived once more the military traditions of his 
race and the title of " Colonel." With distinc- 
tion he served as colonel of the Second Massa- 
chusetts Regiment, suffered in the prisons of the 
Confederacy, and when exchanged went once 
more to the front at the head of a colored regi- 
ment. His brother, Josiah P., devoted to the 
more peaceful ways of literature, but in it war- 
ring for truth, sociological and spiritual, is the 
one of his family through whom the honored 
name Josiah is passed on to still another gen- 
eration. His son Josiah, in these recent years 
mayor of Boston, is the sixth of the name. Even 
before his advent some one wittily said of the 
Quincys that, while with other families the de- 
scent was from sire to son, in their case it was 
from 'Siah to 'Siah. The obvious pun on the sur- 
name has also been perpetrated with a tiu-n so 
apposite as to lift it out of the commonplace. 
The Rev. Mather Byles, long celebrated in Bos- 
ton as a wit, in his younger days, it is said, made 
advances to a lady who refused his suit. After- 
wards she married a Quincy, and Dr. Byles meet- 
ing her remarked, " So, madam, it appears that 
you prefer Quincy to Byles." "Yes," she rephed, 
" for if there had been anything worse than biles, 
God would have afflicted Job with them." 



186 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Now that this slight history of the Quincy 
family has been brought down through its lead- 
ing members to the present time, it would be 
well to return to the history of the old mansion 
in which the race began its career in America, 
and note briefly its occupants and owners since 
it passed out of the hands of the Quincys. 

The old house was ahenated in the days of 
Squire Edmund. In 1755 he mortgaged it or 
sold it to his brother-in-law, Edward Jackson, 
styhng the home my " mansion house," and 
estimating his land at about two hundred and 
fifty acres. The transaction is effected for 
" £675 lawful money of Great Britain." After 
this, for several years, as has been related, he 
lived in the mansion. Upon the death of Ed- 
ward Jackson, in 1763, his executors definitively 
parted with the property, selling it for £2400, 
" lawful money of the Province." The title is 
now held for a short time by Mary AUeyne of 
Milton, and by Benjamin Beale of Braintree, 
and finally passes, February 19, 1788, into the 
hands of Moses Black of Boston. It is then 
that Oliver Wendell and Mary (Jackson) Wen- 
dell, his wife, the heirs of Edward Jackson, 
" release, remise and quitclaim," whatever in- 
terest in the estate remains to them. 

Moses Black and his family were the first to 
occupy the mansion permanently after it had 
passed out of the possession of the Quincys. 




JOSIAH QUINCY, MAYOR OF BOSTON, 1846-4 



THE COLONIAL COLONELS 187 

Once more the brook, or creek, has its name 
changed, and thenceforward is known as "Black's 
Creek." Mr. Black was a Protestant Irishman, 
in his origins probably a Scotsman, and con- 
nected with that band of Scotch-Irish immi- 
grants who founded the Federal Street Church 
in Boston (now Arlington Street Church), made 
famous subsequently by its greatest preacher. Dr. 
Channing. His father, it is surmised, was the 
" Capt. Samuel Black of Ireland," buried in Bos- 
ton's Old Granary Burying-Ground about 1749. 
He had a brother named Andrew, a prosperous 
shipping merchant of Boston, and father of 
Anna, or Roxanna, Black, a celebrated beauty 
in her day. An article in the Boston " Daily 
Globe," by Alexander Corbett, Jr., states she 
was married on January 6, 1793, to Joseph Blake, 
Jr., a son of the former partner of her father. 
It is likely she was a frequent visitor to Brain- 
tree (or that part of it incorporated as Quincy 
in 1792), where her Uncle Moses was becoming 
an honored citizen. He is appointed on im- 
portant committees, is chosen moderator of town 
meetings, and is elected to the General Court. 
On September 30, 1799, it was " voted that the 
thanks of the town be returned President Adams 
and Mr. Moses Black for the present to the town 
of a clock in the meetino^-house." He died in 
1810, bequeathing $1000 each to Anna Black 
Lamb and Mrs. Roxanna Blake, widow of Joseph 



188 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Blake, Jr., and all his real estate in Quincy to his 
wife, " provided that if my said wife marry again, 
then I give and devise one-half of said Quincy 
real estate to Anna Hall." Thus provoked to 
continue in her widowhood, she highly resolved 
to receive into her home during the summer 
months " the gentility of Boston." Her ghost 
now walks the halls and grounds of the old man- 
sion. Why hers above all who ever lived there, 
is beyond guessing, unless it be in anxious pur- 
suit of what " Boston gentility," through those 
long summer days, thought its due. 

In 1825 Mrs. Black sold the entire place for 
$12,400 to EHzabeth Greenleaf, wife of Daniel 
Greenleaf. Notable people were the Greenleafs 
in the Quincy of that day. There was Daniel, 
who occupied the mansion, and his sister Pris- 
cilla, the widow of John Appleton ; there was 
John, the brother of Daniel, whose wife Lucy 
was the daughter of Judge Richard Cranch, 
and who occupied the ancient Cranch house on 
School Street ; and there was Thomas, a cousin 
of Daniel and John, who for fifty years lived 
in a beautiful home on Adams Street. Highly 
esteemed were they in all the families of them : 
related backward to Sheriff Greenleaf of Boston, 
and the Cranches and Abigail Adams ; and for- 
ward to the Greenleafs, merchants of Boston, 
to the Appletons, to true-hearted Harrison J. 
Dawes, and others of that name. 




JOSIAH QUINCY, MAYOR OF BOSTON, 1896-99 



% 

THE COLONIAL COLONELS 189 

From the Greenleafs the mansion now passed 
into the hands of Dr. Ebenezer Woodward, 
whose wife was the youngest daughter of Thomas 
Greenleaf . The old doctor, strong in his Hkes 
and dishkes, thrifty and yet generous, individual, 
indeed, as were most of the men of his day and 
profession, cherished for chief purpose the re- 
dressing of the balance of educational opportu- 
nities in the town of Quincy. John Adams had 
founded an academy for boys ; he would estab- 
lish one for girls. So in his will he bequeathed 
his estate to this end, suggesting that the Insti- 
tute be built on a portion of his land opposite 
the Hancock lot, on which the Adams Academy 
stands. Some sixty thousand dollars or more 
fell to the Woodward Institute, and there it 
stands to-day, facing the older school and emu- 
lating its beneficent work. 

It was during the thirty years or more the 
town authorities held the estate in trust that it 
was occupied by the Hon. Peter Butler. At first 
a refuge in summer from the city's heat and 
noise, it soon was made his permanent resi- 
dence. He loved the place for its idyllic beauty 
and for its charming history. He saturated him- 
self with its traditions. All its antiquities he 
searched out and cherished, and every noble or 
humorous story he enjoyed and related with 
keen relish. Again, as in the old days, life 
brimmed and flooded the mansion, the farm was 



190 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

kept up, and the great barn stocked with a large 
herd of fine cattle. Natural it seemed for Mr. 
Butler, when released from affairs in the city and 
public duties, to enter into the restful life " of a 
sound and honest rustic Squire." 

When the older part of the mansion was built 
by William Coddington, his minister was the 
Rev. John Wilson, pastor of Boston church, and 
spiritual guide of all who were taking up farms 
in the region now included in the towns of 
Quincy and Braintree. Two hundred and fifty 
years afterward the minister of the church which 
in 1639 succeeded Coddington's and Wheel- 
wright's Chapel of Ease, was also named Wilson. 
It is a coincidence which was glanced at when 
the First Church of Christ in Quincy celebrated 
its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. There 
is no kinship between the ministers, but it seemed 
pleasant to look upon the fact as a finishing 
touch to the cycle then completed. This latter- 
day parson became occupant and owner of the 
mansion, and, like all who have lived in it before 
him, came to delight in its pictiu-esqueness and 
the wealth of its noble traditions. If, in this 
story he has attempted to tell, he shall awaken 
in others similar deHght in the great " Figures 
of the Past," he will feel himself doubly favored 
in the fortunate chance which brought him 
under this famous roof-tree. 



IX 

DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 

What a charm, what a flavor of old romance, 
what a gleam of high-hearted ways and swift 
conquests, there is for us in the name Dorothy ! 
Always cherished by Americans from the early 
days of the first " Dorothy Q.," it has now be- 
come more than ever a choice title to bestow 
upon those possibilities of all perfection, " trail- 
ing clouds of glory " as they come, who are to 
unfold into the splendor of womanhood for which 
our race is famed. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
certainly stimulated the love for the name by 
his tuneful praise of the Dorothy who brought 
him — 

" Mother and sister and child and wife, 
And joy and sorrow and death and life." 

The revival, also, of interest in ancient days and 
colonial dames, as certainly has deepened the 
affection. But back of the name and the plea- 
sant sound of it, back of all that poets have 
sung and historians have said of it, there must 
be an entrancing ideal, a vision of worth and 
loveliness, a haunting radiance, which dawns 
upon the consciousness whenever the word Doro- 



192 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

thy breaks upon eye or ear. Few may clearly re- 
alize what afPects them in the name, but were we 
to make captive our fleeting impressions, should 
we not discern a luminous presence, the compo- 
site of all the Dorothys we have seen in picture 
or read of in story? Is not this airy nothing 
our dream of the fair American dame of other 
days? Is it not woven of our conceptions of 
the simple, modest graces of the Puritan maiden 
and the stately presence, pompadour crowned, 
which moved through Washington's court and 
Hancock's levee, conquering and to conquer? 
Now the one and now the other conception pre- 
dominates, and again they mingle, if that be 
possible ; but through every winning transfor- 
mation one thing persists, an ideal of divinely 
sweet and true womanhood, — Dorothea, gift of 
God. 

The name appears early in our history. It 
was brought by the first settlers from the yeo- 
man soil of England, with the daisy and the 
apple blossom. In it there was enough of noble 
association and musical sound to strengthen it 
against the deluge of Hebrew names which 
swept in with the Puritan reformation. Side by 
side with Priscilla and Abigail and Martha, it 
held its own and swayed the hearts and homes 
of our forefathers. Old Braintree, Massachu- 
setts, in that portion now called Quincy, is the 
scene where the name rooted itself in vital bloom 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 193 

and perennial vigor. There " Dorothy Q," of 
Holmes's poem was born, there " Hancock's 
Dorothy" grew to womanhood. Before these, 
however, were others of their race, gracious and 
wise women, who honored this font name. 

The great mother of all the famous New Eng- 
land Dorothys is Dorothy Flynt, daughter of the 
Rev. Henry Flynt and his wife Margery (Hoar) 
Flynt. Progenitors are these of some of the 
most distin squished families of America. The 
Holmeses, the Wendells, the Lowells, the Jack- 
sons, the Quincys, the Adamses, the Salsburys, 
and other historic persons make illustrious their 
descent from the excellent stock represented in 
the worthy pastor and his wife. 

Henry Flynt was a young man of unusual 
abilities when he was settled as teacher over the 
First Church in Braintree, now Quincy. Mar- 
gery, ^' his beloved consort, . . . was a gentle- 
woman of piety, prudence, and peculiarly ac- 
complished for instructing young gentlewomen ; 
many being sent to her from other towns, espe- 
cially from Boston. They descended from an- 
cient and good families in England." Indeed, the 
mother of Margery was that Joanna Hoar, widow 
of the sheriff of Gloucester, herself a gentle- 
woman of strong character, who was connected, 
through the marriage of her son Leonard to 
Bridget Lisle, with the fated Lady Alicia Lisle. 
The line of our Senator George F. Hoar proudly 



194 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDEXCE BEGAN" 

looks to her for its origin ; and it " may fairly 
be questioned," writes Mr. C. F. Adams in his 
" Three Episodes of Massachusetts History," 
" whether in the whole wide field of American 
genealogy there is any strain of blood more fruit- 
ful of distino-uished men than that which issued 
from the widow of the seventeenth-century sher- 
iff." " Distinguished men ! " Are they alone to 
be remembered ! " They reckon ill who leave 
me out," might Abigail Adams say, and many 
another wise and loving lady of that celebrated 
strain of blood. From the widow Joanna, down 
through every generation since, they are to be 
recognized, not only in the happiness of their 
husbands and the nobleness of their children, 
but in their own force of character and high 
and faithful service. 

Into this noble kinship and illustrious line of 
men and women Dorothy I. was born August 
21, 1642. We know little more about this earli- 
est Dorothy except that she was married to the 
worthy Samuel Shepperd, minister of Rowley, 
Mass., on the 30th of April, 1666. There is, 
however, testimony of some value to the affection 
in which she was held by her brother Josiah, in 
the fact of his naming after her his one daughter 
who lived to maturity. 

This Dorothy II. was born in Dorchester, 
Mass., May 11, 1678. Her father, Josiah Flynt, 
son of Henry Flynt, was minister of First Church 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 195 

in that town, and in the very year of his settle- 
ment, 1671, married, at Swansey, Esther, the 
daughter of Captain Thomas Willet, the first 
mayor of New York. It was in Braintree, how- 
ever, that Dorothy was brought up, for her father 
died when she was scarcely two years old, and her 
mother, it seems, with her little brood, removed 
at once to the place of her husband's nativity. 
There among his kindred she was sure of a 
warm welcome. Perhaps she was asked to keep 
house for Edmund Quincy in the old Quincy 
mansion. His wife, Joanna (Hoar) Quincy, who 
was sister to Margery (Hoar) Flynt, her hus- 
band's mother, had passed away the previous 
May. Margery herself was still living, a gran- 
dame of " faculty " for all her years ; and there 
were uncles and aunts " too numerous to men- 
tion." Hearts and homes were invitingly open 
to her, and here in old Braintree she lived and 
died, attaining the full age of eighty-nine years. 
Not large was her family, only Henry and Doro- 
thy surviving of the four children born to her, 
and there would be little difficulty in bringing 
them up in the midst of such hospitable sur- 
roundings. Dorothy would have for playmates, 
as she blossomed into girlhood, the children of all 
the families of the better sort in the North Pre- 
cinct. Among them were the numerous offspring 
of the Adamses, Basses, Savils, to say nothing of 
the Quincys, now increased by the speedy second 



196 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

marriage of Edmund to the Widow Gookin, seven 
months after the death of his first wife. The lit- 
tle Edmund Quincy, born in 1681, was her junior 
by three years. Their pleasant neighborhood in- 
timacies ripened rapidly into affectionate relations, 
and but a month beyond his twentieth year, on 
November 20, 1701, they were united in mar- 
riage. 

Viewed from either side the match was a 
felicitous one. The strain of the virile Hoar 
family already had been united with the steadily 
climbing virtues of the Quincy family, and now 
the keen intellectual qualities of the Flynts were 
to be intermingled through the beautiful Doro- 
thy. This first " Dorothy Q." is not born, but 
made, — changed by marriage from Dorothy F. 
to Dorothy Q. But no gift of seer is required 
to discern in her, as source and origin of Doro- 
thys yet to be, illustrious prefigurement of the 
" miracle of noble womanhood " which so richly 
adorns her line. Lovelier than her name, as Ten- 
nyson says of flowers, we may deem her ; wise 
and good most surely. And do not these qualities 
of themselves, " an inner lamping light," im- 
part to the face of her who is simply one of the 
fair sex a beauty quite beyond that of classical 
outline and clearness of complexion ? She was 
fitting helpmeet to a husband commanding in 
presence and ability. The first citizen of Brain- 
tree he, she the first lady. And when he, youth- 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 197 

ful still, had won by merit a distinguished place 
in the colony, she shared and graced the distinc- 
tion. 

Her sisterly affection also is apparent in the 
addition made to the Quincy mansion for the 
convenience of her only brother, the facetious 
Henry Flynt, tutor at Harvard for fifty-five 
years. In a two-story L, study and chamber 
were provided for him, where he might rest from 
college labors and come under her immediate 
care. Her mother, too, found a home with her, 
ending her days under that hospitable roof in 
July, 1737. 

A few weeks later, just as her husband was 
about to start for England to defend the rights 
of Massachusetts in the boundary dispute be- 
tween that colony and New Hampshire, Dorothy 
herself suddenly passed away. " He intermarried 
with Dorothy Flynt," runs the quaint obituary 
in the " Weekly Journal " of that day, " whom 
he buried the 29th of August last. God blessed 
them with ten children, four of whom survive in 
great sorrow." These words are really from the 
notice of his own death, so soon did he join her in 
the silent land. He took with him to England 
the ache in his heart for the death of his be- 
loved Dorothy, " sweet and gracious woman " 
that she was, and succumbed all the more easily 
to inoculation for the smallpox, to which, as a 
precautionary measure, he submitted. He was 



198 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

buried in Bunhill Fields, where reposes the dust 
of Bunyan, in February of that grievous year 
1737-8, and on April 23, 1738, his pastor, John 
Hancock, preached the funeral sermon. The 
children were in front of him, seated in their 
pew, or on the fore-seats in the old meeting- 
house; and looking sorrowfully upon them he 
addressed them in words which, though spoken 
more than one hundred and fifty years ago, still 
quiver with the agony of their burden. " The 
blessed God hath seen meet to break you with 
Breach upon Breach ; first in the death of your 
pious Grandmother Flynt, in a good old age, 
and then in the sudden death of your virtuous 
mother." 

Dorothy III., the " Dorothy Q." of Dr. Holmes's 
poem, was one of the children over whom rolled 
these sorrowful words. She was now some twen- 
ty-nine years old, having been born January 4, 
1709. Here is the ancient form in which the 
birth was set down in the town records : " Dora- 
thy, ye Daughter of Edmund Quinsey, Esq'', & 
M^ Dorathy, his wife, was born ye 4th January, 
1709." This entry was included in a note sent 
to Dr. Holmes in 1889. In his reply he wrote, 
'^ I was pleased to learn from your note that 
'Dorothy Q.' — my Dorothy, not Governor Han- 
cock's, who was her niece — was born in 1709, 
just a hundred years before I came into atmos- 
pheric existence." The large south chamber, it 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 199 

is conjectured, was the scene of this advent ; a 
room with a sunny exposure, and since called the 
" Dorothy." Uncongenial was the season chosen 
to usher into the world the little maid, and, 
though the logs blazed high in the open fire- 
place night and day, the sun would prove a 
most welcome aid to impart warmth and cheer. 
Baptism soon should have followed birth accord- 
ing to the custom of that day, but Mistress 
Quincy entertained the opinion, perhaps, that 
the daughter of a minister " hath a privilege," 
and so would not commit her " wee Dolly " to 
the rude blasts of winter and the deadly chill 
of the unheated church. But really there seems 
to have been in the parents a confirmed habit of 
procrastination with regard to this rite, for Doro- 
thy was not baptized till April 30, 1721, and then 
were " Colonel Quinsey's family all baptized." 

By this time she had expanded into promise 
of ideal Puritan maidenhood, — "modest and 
simple and sweet " as the Mayflower unfolds in 
the shade of the forest. How peaceful her en- 
vironment ! that household so wisely ordered 
and so industrious ! that companionship with the 
brook and the shore, the flowers and the trees, all 
so free, so natural ! Liberated from simple home 
duties, easy is it to imagine her walking the 
meadow paths, fed by her own pure fancies, up- 
lifted by thoughts selected among a thousand 
by her own temperament, cherishing the aspira- 



200 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

tions native to her own soul, and so educated 
along individual lines into serious, self-reliant 
womanhood. Abigail Adams, and many another 
noble woman who might be named, grew up in 
this fashion, leading us to wonder if the very 
essence of education, of soul-forming, is not lost 
in modern schools and colleges, where so little 
space is left for one's own thoughts and the pro- 
cesses of individual expansion. 

Dorothy's existence was delightfully varied 
now and then by visits to relatives in " Boston, 
the metropolis of our country," as her father 
called it. In these early years she even went as 
far as Springfield ; and it is from letters written 
her while there by her father that we get the 
one authentic glimpse, which, with the famous 
portrait, makes her real to us. One of the let- 
ters, preserved by Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, and 
published in the " New England Historical and 
Genealogical Register," is as follows : — 

Bra-intbee, July 8, 1724. 

Mt dear Daughter, — This is to bring you the good 
news of my safe return home commencement day in the 
evening, and finding your mother in good health. 

With this you will have from your sister Betsey the 
things you wrote for by me, and from your brother Ed- 
mund a small present. My child, you are peculiarly fa- 
vored among your friends in these parts in having a good 
word spoken of you, and good wishes made for you by 
everybody ; let this hint be improved only to quicken and 
encourage you in virtue and a good life. 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 201 

My love to all the family in which you are, with your 
mother's and Grandmother's also, to them and you. 
I am your dear and loving father, 

E. QuiNCY. 

Half a yard of muslin being too little for two head- 
dresses, your sister has sent you one yard wanting half a 
quarter, which cost ten and sixpence, — and the thread 
(lace) cost fourteen shillings ; so much I paid for, and 't is 
the best thread and muslin of the price. 

In another of these letters written November 
9, 1724, he writes : — 

" Your sister Bettey will be married the 12th day of this 
month (that is next Thursday night) if health permit. 

" You may and ought to wish her joy and happiness in 
the new relation and condition she is entering into though 
you are at a great distance from her. We make no wed- 
ding for her but only a small entertainment on Friday, 
for a few friends that may happen to be present. You '11 
hear the particulars perhaps from your brother Edmund or 
Josiah after 't is over. Your mother has sent you the muslin 
Pattern, Thread and needles, a Knott and girdle the Gown 
and quilted coat are not sent at present your mother thinks 
you may do without the gown and if you can possibly 't is 
best that you may not have too great a pack of things to 
bring back and besides we are apt to think 't is best you 
should keep in and not expose yourself this winter (though 
you be better) lest you fall back again by catching cold. 
Before Spring you may write further if need be for a sup- 
ply. The silk for Mrs. Hooker is also sent and the price is 
1.3.10 being 7s. 4d. a yard you may acquaint her. 

" Pray give my kind salutation to her and Mr. Hooker 
with all the family and your mother also my regards to Dr. 
Porter and Mr. Whitman if you see him and he inquires 
after me." 



202 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

One more letter remains, as interesting as the 
others in the light it throws upon Dorothy and 
her kindred of those days. No part of it can be 
omitted. 

Braintree, May 6tli, 1725. 

Dear Child, — Your mother and I were not so willing 
to have you leave us though for your own good, but now 
as desirous to see you here again were it for the best. 
Accept this expression as from the best of your earthly 
friends (your dear Parents) who think of you every day 
and hope to hear of you oftener than of late. 

The last of your letters I have yet received was dated 
March 6th. 

I have wrote since then once or twice but know not 
whether they have come to your hand. I expect a letter 
from you and Dr. Porter every day. 

Your brother Edmund you have heard I suppose is 
married and I hope very happily and that we shall have 
joy and comfort in this double relation to Mr. Wendells 
family. Brother Wendell and his wife from New York 
was at the wedding and have since been at our house a few 
days and are returning in a short time home by the way 
of Rhode Island as they came. The new married couple 
are yet at their uncles house but are to live with brother 
Wendell and his wife and Miss Molly Higginson is going 
from hence to-morrow to live with them, and your mother 
will be destitute of a companion and assistant again but I 
hope will be provided for. 

I am going on Monday next to Piscataqua to keep court 
at Ipswich and York to be absent about a fortnight. 
I am your loving father, 

Edmund Quincy. 

What a vivid and charming picture of life in 
the old homestead is outlined in these letters I 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 203 

And Dorothy, demure Dorothy, who is well 
spoken of by every one, is so beloved by the 
Hookers of Springfield that they would like to 
keep her with them forever ! Is she herself al- 
most flattered by their affection into staying? 
However that may be, her parents long for her 
with a deeper longing, now that Edmund and 
Bettey are married and away, and she is lured 
back to her home. It is about this time that 
the celebrated portrait of her was painted, as we 
guess. The story of it as told by Dr. Holmes is 
as follows : — 

" The painting hung in the house of my 
grandfather Oliver Wendell, which was occupied 
by British officers before the evacuation of Bos- 
ton. One of these gentlemen amused himself by 
stabbing poor Dorothy (the pictured one) as near 
the right eye as his swordsmanship would serve 
him to do it. The canvas was so decayed that 
it became necessary to remount the painting, in 
the process of doing which the hole made by the 
rapier was lost sight of. I took some photo- 
graphs of the picture before it was transferred 
to the new canvas." 

" Grandmother's mother : her age, I guess, 
Thirteen summers, or something less ; 
Girlish bust, but womanly air ; 
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair ; 
Lips that lover has never kissed ; 
Taper fingers and slender wrist ; 
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade ; 
So they painted the little maid. 



204 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

" On her hand a parrot green 
Sits unmoving and broods serene. 
Hold up the canvas full in view, — 
Look ! there 's a rent the light shines through, 
Dark v^ith a century's fringe of dust, — 
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust ! 
Such is the tale the lady old, 
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told. 

" Who the painter was none may tell, — 
One whose best was not over well ; 
Hard and dry, it must be confessed, 
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed ; 
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, 
Dainty colors of red and white, 
And in her slender shape are seen 
Hint and promise of stately mien. 

" Look not on her with eyes of scorn, — 
Dorothy Q. was a lady born ! 
Ay ! since the galloping Normans came, 
England's annals have known her name ; 
And still to the three-hilled rebel town 
Dear is that ancient name's renown, 
For many a civic wreath they won, 
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son." 

Soon after the publication of the poem Dr. 
Holmes wrote a note to Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, 
in response to an appreciative one written by 
her, in which he says, " I am very glad you were 
pleased with ' Dorothy Q.' I hope when her 
portrait comes back with its wound healed and 
its youth restored you will come and take a look 
at it. I would send you one of my photographs 
of the picture — if I could lay my hands on it — 
with this note, but I have so lately moved to a 




"DOROTHY Q." 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 205 

new house that I cannot at once find many 
thino^s I want. I will remember to hunt one 
up for you, and if you do not get it within 
four weeks I beg you will remind me of my 
promise." 

Few are the events we now have to relate of 
the damsel Dorothy. On Sunday, May 28, 1727, 
she was received by her pastor, the Rev. John 
Hancock, into full communion. She was then 
eighteen years of age, a time when sincerity of 
soul and faithfulness to visions of the ideal 
awaken in the young all noble aspirations and 
moral audacities. The field for Dorothy's tri- 
umphs was not the wide world, nor " by the 
shores of old romance," but only a Puritan home 
with its plain duties. It was enough, however, 
for the display of her patience and the unbla- 
zoned heroisms of ordinary life. She was now the 
main reliance of her mother in the multifarious 
duties of an increasing domestic establishment. 
Her father was attaining to higher honors and a 
wider fame, and a generous hospitality kept pace 
with ampler means. 

Indeed, the Quincy mansion, at about this 
time the most pretentious and roomy house in 
the town, was roof -tree for reunions of the widely 
related family ; the shrine of domestic origins ; 
the central hearth, inviting frequent pilgrima- 
gings of the dispersed Quincy s and Flynts and 
Hoars and Sewalls and Wendells and numerous 



206 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

others. Then there were parties of squires and 
dames on pleasure bent from Boston, and meet- 
ings of grave justices, and visits of dignified 
colonial officials, to say nothing of the solemn 
gatherings of parish committees to arrange the 
" prudentials " of the church. To these things, 
ordinary and extraordinary, Dorothy gave her 
life, which may account for her delay in giving 
her hand to Edward Jackson, Esq., of Boston. 
She was twenty-nine years of age when she was 
married to him on the 7th day of December, 
1738. From the old home in Braintree she was 
removed to a home of wealth and culture in 
Boston. Here her daughter Mary was born, 
who married Judge Oliver Wendell in 1762, 
whose daughter Sarah married the Rev. Abiel 
Holmes, father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Along this line descended the portrait of Doro- 
thy, and the silver teapot of Tutor Flynt, and 
the poet. 

« O Damsel Dorothy ! Dorothy Q. ! 
Strange is the gift that I owe to you ; 
Such a gift as never a king 
Save to daughter or son might bring, — 
All my tenure of heart and hand, 
All my title to house and land ; 
Mother and sister and child and wife 
And joy and sorrow and death and life ! 

** What if a hundred years ago 
Those close-shut lips had answered No, 
When forth the tremulous question came 
That cost the maiden her Norman name, 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 207 

And under the folds that look so still 

The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill ? 

Should I be I, or would it be 

One tenth another, to nine tenths me ? 

" Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes : 
Not the light gossamer stirs with less ; 
But never a cable that holds so fast 
Through all the battles of wave and blast, 
And never an echo of speech or song 
That lives in the babbling air so long ! 
There were tones in the voice that whispered then 
You may hear to-day in a hundred men. 

" O lady and lover, how faint and far 
Your images hover, — and here we are, 
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone, — 
Edward's and Dorothy's — all their own, — 
A goodly record for Time to show 
Of a syllable spoken so long ago ! — 
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive 
For the tender whisper that bade me live ? 

" It shall be a blessing, my little maid ! 
I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, 
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame. 
And gild with a rhyme your household name ; 
So you shall smile on us brave and bright 
As first you greeted the morning's light. 
And live untroubled by woes and fears 
Through a second youth of a hundred years." 

The rest of her days Dorothy spent in Boston, 
"our metropolis." There she is all but lost to 
view in the social whirl of a capital proud of its 
royal governor and his court, and boastful of 
its population numbering twelve thousand im- 
portant souls. Occasionally she emerges from 
this dazzUng sea of light and becomes visible as 



208 WHERE AJMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

she visits her native Braintree ; but for the man- 
ner of her Hfe and the events of it we are left to 
the imagination. She passed away in her home 
in Boston in 1762. But of these dames who 
are more than queens we may proclaim, Dorothy 
is dead ! Long live Dorothy ! 

Dorothy IV. is already on the throne. " Han- 
cock's Dorothy " is she, — " King Hancock/' as 
the loyalists called him in derision, — made king 
now in reahty by his alliance to royalty. She 
should have elected to be born in Braintree, now 
Quincy, the home of her race, the place pre- 
appointed for the nativity of the great. It is 
an oversight, from the effects of which Quincy 
historians have never fully recovered. But her 
parents, Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth (Wen- 
dell) Quincy, because there was no room for 
them in the mansion, went immediately to Bos- 
ton upon their marriage, April 15, 1725. Here 
they spent their honeymoon and many a moon, 
no less romantic, besides; and so it perversely 
came about that destiny was defeated and their 
children first saw the light in the three-hilled 
town. It was their intention, as father Quincy 
wrote, "to live with brother Wendell and his 
wife " for a space, and this intention they very 
likely carried out. Later, they secured a home 
of their own on the south side of Summer Street. 
Writing of this residence Miss Eliza Susan Quincy 
says, " I know it was the residence of the elder 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 209 

brother of my great-grandfather from about 
1740 to 1752." Here it was, then, that Han- 
cock's Dorothy was born, May 10, 1747, and she 
was baptized May 17, " 1 w. old." 

Do not imagine, however, that the parents of 
Dorothy entirely deserted the old homestead in 
Braintree. They went back there for many de- 
lio-htful family gatherings and some sad ones. 
And when, in 1737-38, his parents suddenly 
passed away, Edmund Quincy, her brother, be- 
came heir to the mansion and the home farm 
surrounding it. Affectionately bound was he 
now^ to that home by a double bond, — that of 
birth and mastership. He was deeply engaged 
in mercantile enterprises in Boston, but he could 
not be held back from the rural delights and 
the uplifting associations of the ancient home 
of himself and his race. Through those earlier, 
prosperous years it was his summer home. It 
was the custom even then among the well-to-do 
to have their city and their country establish- 
ments. To Braintree he went for long, restful 
months amid the glorious scenes of one of the 
most beautiful towns on the shores of the bay. 

Thither flocked at his invitation merry parties 
from Boston, and we hear faint echoes of their 
laughter as they disported themselves al fresco 
about the well-kept grounds. Sir Henry Frank- 
land, the romantic and poetic personage of that 
day, was a friend of the family. He, with his 



210 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN^ 

Agnes Surriagej that brilliant brunette, whose 
face and form captivated him when he first saw 
her, in rags and barefooted, scrubbing the floor 
of the old inn in Marblehead, joined in these 
excursions. What gleams of dainty gowns and 
rich vestments, what picturesque groupings, what 
drifting of silver-footed nymphs, as of breeze- 
blown petals, across the lawns ! From fi^ne feast- 
ing under the trees they turn with merry chal- 
lenges to the brook to supply Dame Quincy's 
larder with fish for yet another feast at set of 
sun. 

Some of this splendor Dorothy saw, and part 
of it she was. While still a child, not over five 
years old, the family removed to Braintree per- 
manently. From mercantile ventures, which lat- 
terly had proved unfortunate, Mr. Quincy turned 
to farming. It was " gentleman farming," fa- 
cilitated by a few excellent theories, a kind not 
unknown at this day ; and in the extravagance 
of it he was assisted by Sir Henry Frankland, 
who advises him to " propagate ye Warden pear 
from Cyons," and by Benjamin Franklin, who 
presents him " a small pack'g of cuttings of the 
small Rhenish grape." Tradition fastens upon 
an ancient pear-tree still flourishing, and upon a 
grapevine, improved away (all but a single sHp) 
about ten years ago, as growths of the identical 
plants referred to. The farming did not pay, 
could not be made to retrieve mercantile mis- 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 211 

chances, and in 1756 the estate was mortgaged 
to brother-in-law Edward Jackson. But Doro- 
thy and her brothers and sisters (there were 
eight of them all told) flourished on the farm, if 
nothing else did. 

Soon it dawned upon the glad eyes of the 
young men of Braintree and Boston that Judge 
Quincy's five daughters were rarely beautiful. 
The fame of them spread through all the coun- 
try round, and the praise of Dorothy was not 
the least fervent. Like bees to flowers the beaux 
gathered from near and far. Among them we 
discern General William Greenleaf, John Adams, 
Bela Lincoln, Samuel Sewall, and Jonathan Sew- 
all. Sarah speedily brought General Greenleaf 
to her feet, and Samuel Sewall fell captive to 
Elizabeth. The future President confesses the 
power of Esther's " beauty, vivacity and spirit." 
He circles ever nearer to her, like moth to can- 
dle-light, but flutters away before he is scorched, 
leaving room for the advances of Jonathan Sew- 
all. Communing with the privacy of his diary, 
John Adams concludes that Esther is " pert, 
sprightly and gay, but thinks and reads much 
less than Hannah Quincy," her cousin. Towards 
Hannah his thoughts now turn, and he grows 
very neighborly with her father, Josiah Quincy, 
then living in the Hancock parsonage across the 
way. Beauty and bookishness ! — dainty teas 
and talks upon Homer, Milton, and Venice Pre- 



212 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

served ! — the combination is irresistible. " She 
can practice the art of pleasing," he writes, " lets 
us see a face of ridicule and spying, sometimes 
inadvertently, though she looks familiarly and 
pleasantly for the most part. She is apparently 
frank but really reserved ; seemingly pleased and 
almost charmed when she is really laughing with 
contempt." Coquetting in this pretty way she 
asks him such near questions as, supposing he 
had a wife would he do thus and so ? " Should 
you like to spend your evenings at home read- 
ing and conversing with your wife, rather than 
spend them abroad in taverns or with other com- 
pany ? " His reply in its fine New England re- 
serve indicates the seriousness of the situation. 
" I should prefer the company of an agreeable 
wife to any other company, for the most part, 
not always ; I should not like to be imprisoned 
at home." More intimate they became when the 
pert Esther and her sister Susan from the mansion 
" broke in upon Hannah and me and interrupted 
a conversation that would have terminated in a 
courtship that would have terminated in a mar- 
riage which might have depressed me to absolute 
poverty and obscurity to the end of my life. . . . 
Now let me collect my thoughts," he heroically 
continues, " which have long been scattered 
among girls, matrimony, hustling, chat, provi- 
sions, clothing. . . . Let love and vanity be ex- 
tinguished and the great passion of ambition, 




B 
o* 

oi 
w 

Q 
O 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 213 

patriotism, break out and burn." Alas for these 
heroics ! In less than two years he is looking 
with deep interest upon Abigail, the daughter 
of parson Smith of Weymouth, and is talking 
to her his Homer and Milton and Venice Pre- 
served. 

Dorothy, an opening bud in this blooming 
garden of girls, was now some thirteen summers 
old. Her large eyes, we may well believe, were 
keenly observant of all this sweet commerce, and 
her ears attentive to all the sprightly talk wafted 
around her on the melodious element of youth- 
ful laughter. When it was that she herself be- 
came the object of the serious regard of admirers 
we have no means of knowing. They were 
numerous enough before John Hancock finally 
swept them to a proper distance by his imperial 
claims, supported as they were by the vigilance 
of his aunt. Madam Lydia Hancock. He was 
her senior by ten years, — had graduated from 
Harvard and had been adopted into the family 
of his rich uncle, Thomas Hancock, in Boston, 
before she had outgrown her girlhood. How- 
ever, he would frequently return to Braintree, 
where he was born, and could not fail to note 
the unfolding loveliness of Dorothy. Did he 
avow his affection for her while yet the tumult 
of the Revolution was afar off and her home 
was in the old mansion ? Tradition says ^^ Yes," 
and further avers that not only was the troth 



214 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

plighted there, but that all plans were made to 
celebrate the wedding in the home of her fathers. 
The large north parlor was adorned with a new 
wall paper express from Paris, and appropriately 
figured with the forms of Venus and Cupid in 
blue, and pendent wreaths of flowers in red. 
Does any one doubt the tradition ? There on 
the wall hangs the paper to this day, unfading 
in its antiquity and mutely confounding the in- 
credulous. 

But it was not destined to contribute its har- 
monious decorations to the joyous event. Before 
the happy day arrived the resistance of the 
high-spirited colonists to the oppressive measures 
of a willful king and " his friends " had burst 
forth in sulphurous flames. There was the swift, 
resolute muster of a new-born nation, and the 
scene of it was chaotic in the abrupt dispersion 
of long established domesticities. Not in Bos- 
ton, nor Braintree, nor Lexington, nor in the 
tier of towns behind them was to be found an 
abiding-place safe from the British ; and so while 
Judge Quincy sought sanctuary in Lancaster, in 
the home of his daughter Mrs. Greenleaf, Doro- 
thy, under the protection of Madam Hancock, 
fled to Fairfield, Connecticut. There the wed- 
ding was celebrated at last with due pomp and 
hilarity. 

It is in the lurid light of those heroic days 
that Dorothy first comes into clear view. All 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 215 

throiig-h the memorable winter of 1774-75 we 
perceive she is in Boston, at the very heart of 
convergent patriotic fervor. A frequent guest 
in the stately Hancock mansion, she hears Earl 
Percy's voice as he drills the regulars on the 
common for the inevitable conflict, and in that 
home and in her own she is in daily communion 
with the valiant defenders of liberty, — Dr. War- 
ren, John Adams, Paul Revere, her cousin Josiah 
Quincy, Jr., that Boston Cicero, Sam Adams, 
and many another, to say nothing of patriotic 
dames as numerous and daring. In the wild 
tide of things heart answers to heart. They are 
not to be subdued by the aggressive presence 
and daily insolence of the thousands of British 
troops, nor turned back by the abyss yawning to 
engulf ancient loyalties, loved homes, and a long 
established peace. 

The mansion of " King Hancock," in the early 
days of March, is subjected to acts of vandalism 
by the soldiery ; its windows broken, its fences 
hewn, its coach house wrecked. The " King '' 
himself, threatened with arrest, escapes secretly 
into the country to be at the second meeting of 
the Provincial Congress at Concord. This assem- 
bly adjourns April 15th, and he finds what he 
conceives to be a safe retreat in the parsonage 
at Lexington, where his father had been born, 
and where he himself had spent many of the 
long bright days of youth. Here soon arrives 



216 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Madam Lydia Hancock, anxious and harassed, 
drivins: out from the abandoned Boston mansion 
in a coach with that jealously guarded treasure, 
Dorothy Quincy. " Citizen " Adams is there also, 
a welcome guest under the hospitable roof of 
the Kev. Jonas Clark. At twelve o'clock on the 
night of the eighteenth, said Dorothy in later 
years, Paul Revere gallops up to the door with 
his startling cry of the approach of General 
Gage's troops. The village takes the alarm, the 
church bell clangs its wild tocsin, lights flash 
in house after house far away into the distant 
darkness, and swiftly the minute-men gather on 
the green. John Hancock, alert at the first 
summons, flames hot wdth the rage of fight. 
Hardly is he dissuaded from standing with the 
stout farmers and facing the battalions of the 
reofulars. Brouofht at last to realize that it is he 
himself and Sam Adams that the British would 
count no cost too great to capture, he allows 
himself to be hurried with his companion inland 
to the Woburn Precinct (now Burlington). The 
ladies remain under the protection of the parson. 
Within the shelter of his well built home they 
furtively watch, with no little peril to them- 
selves, the momentous clash of Old World veter- 
ans and homespun colonials. Then, when the 
volleying has died away and the regulars are 
on the march for Concord, Madam Hancock and 
Dorothy turn from the horrors of the battle- 



DOKOTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 217 

field, take coach, and are reunited to tlie pa- 
triots in Woburn. 

Not entirely to Dorothy's mind, however, is 
this assumption of the exclusive custody of her- 
self by the astute Madam Hancock and her 
nephew. She has a natural longing, also, to be 
with her own people. Her mother was dead, 
but she had left her father in Boston ; and to 
him she declared she would return on the mor- 
row. " No, madam," said Hancock, " you shall 
not return as long as there is a British bayonet 
left in Boston." " Recollect, Mr. Hancock," re- 
torted Dorothy, " I am not under your control 
yet. I shall go fco my father to-morrow." And 
very glad she would have been, as she confessed 
late in hfe, to have got rid of him, then and 
there. The awakened waywardness of a maiden 
before whom the incense of fine compliments 
was continuously wafted by a host of admirers 
was with difficulty restrained by Madam Han- 
cock, and then they proceeded on their retreat 
to Fairfield. The course of this retreat, after 
leaving Woburn, is outlined in a letter written 
from Lancaster by Edmund Quincy, May 11, to 
his son Henry. " I was from noon Sat'y till 
Friday eve'g getting up hither with much diffi- 
culty by reason of scarcity of carriages. Cost 
me near 20 £s, besides quartering on some of 
my good friends who were very kind and gen- 
erous. Y'r sister Dolly with Mrs. Hancock 



218 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

came from Shirley to y'r Bro. Grenleeaf's & 
dined & proceeded to Worcester, where Col'o 
H. & Mr. A(dams) were on their way. This 
was 10 days before I got hither, so that I missed 
seeing them. As I hear she proceeded with Mr. 
H. to Fayerfield, I don't expect to see her till 
peaceable times are restored." 

The home in Fairfield where the ladies now 
took up their abode was that of Thaddeus Burr, 
Esq., and it was not long after their arrival that 
there rode into town the fascinating Aaron Burr, 
his nephew, then a young man of twenty-nine, 
in the full pride of life. It is not to be won- 
dered at that Dorothy in her present mood, and 
too carefully protected by duenna Hancock, 
should gradually permit herself to become more 
warmly interested in the brave bearing and gal- 
lant attentions of the exquisite Aaron Burr than 
was entirely compatible with her relations to 
Hancock. 

A bit of local coloring is thrown upon this 
episode by a letter, written some time later, by 
the sprightly Dorothy Dudley, of Cambridge, to 
her friend Esther Livingston, in Philadelphia. 
Hancock, then united to his Dorothy, is in attend- 
ance upon the Continental Congress. " So you 
have seen Mrs. Hancock ! " she writes. " Is she 
not charming ! One cannot w^onder at Madam 
Lydia Hancock's fondness for her, and resolve 
to secure the treasure for her nephew. You have 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 219 

heard how carefully she guarded her against the 
approach of any invader upon Mr. John Hancock's 
rights. I visited Lexington the other day and trod 
the ground so lately wet with the blood of our 
noble minute-men ; went into Mr. Clarke's house, 
where ' King' Hancock and ' Citizen ' Adams were 
lodged that memorable night before the battle, 
and walked under the tree which I am told shel- 
tered them during part of that time of terror. I 
saw the bullet in the wall of the attic chamber 
where the familv were hid at the time, and where 
Madam Hancock very narrowly escaped death, a 
ball grazing her cheek as it passed. After the 
battle Mr. Hancock, who had his coach and four 
at hand, left the town, accompanied by his Aunt 
Lydia and Miss Dorothy Quincy, and rode to one 
of the neighboring villages, and from there by 
slow stage to Fairfield, Connecticut. . . . Aaron 
Burr is a young man of fascinating manners and 
many accomplishments. He w^as much charmed 
with Miss Quincy, I have heard, and she in turn 
was not insensible to his attentions ; but Madam 
Hancock kept a jealous eye upon them both, and 
would not allow any advances upon the part of 
the young man toward the prize reserved for her 
nephew. When the knot was tied that made 
them one, she felt at liberty to breathe. Imme- 
diately after the wedding they set out for Phila- 
delphia, which has been their home ever since." 
The record of this notable event in the clerk's 



220 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

book of the Fairfield church is as follows : " The 
Hon. John Hancock Esqr. and Miss Dorothy 
Quincy, both of Boston were married at Fair- 
field, Aug. 28th, 1775." 

For about four months previous to the marriage 
Dorothy was almost daily in the company of Beau 
Burr. There is httle doubt it was a perilous time 
for the peace of mind of John Hancock. That 
opulent but formal gentleman at a distance was 
scarce a match for the most dashing gallant of 
his age insistently present. " A handsome young 
man of very pretty fortune " is the way Dorothy 
spoke of him in later reminiscent mood. More 
lively is the description of him by Dorothy Dudley 
written in her diary when he had just arrived in 
Cambridge camp from his Fairfield campaign, 
Aug. 1, 1775 : " There is a young man in camp 
whom I have noticed again and again as he 
passes the house. He is striking in appearance, 
though quite small and boyish. His eyes are 
piercing in their brightness, and there is some- 
thing winning in his manner. His name is Aaron 
Burr, a son of Kev. Aaron Burr, formerly Presi- 
dent of Princeton College, N. J., and grandson 
of Rev. Jonathan Edwards." 

For a young woman of Dorothy's temperament 
here was a situation portentous of much, as Car- 
lyle would say. It may be written of her what 
Thomas Hardy writes of one of his characters : 
" She had a spirit with a natural love of liberty, 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 221 

and required the next thing to liberty, spacious- 
ness." Was there promise of this in the manner 
she had been treated of late as a captured person, 
a possession ? A rumor has descended to these 
times that Madam Hancock feared an elopement. 
But what would you ? Was not independence 
in the air? And Dorothy, high-spirited, way- 
ward, and imperious, as the best of her sex, 
might easily persuade herself there really was 
a flavor of abduction in the swooping way 
duenna Hancock fled with her to Fairfield. 
Besides, the habit of conquest was so deeply 
confirmed in her by her invincible progress 
through the courtly society of New England's 
capital that only the utmost self-restraint could 
keep her from making a final and distinguished 
triumph. 

" Oh, saw ye bonie Lesley 

As she gaed o'er the border ? 
She 's gane like Alexander, 

To spread her conquests farther." 

It was a conspicuous flirtation, one to make 
golden the atmosphere of the prim homes and 
romantic scenes of the staid Connecticut village ; 
and it was fraught with the due measure of sur- 
prises. Like gallant ship " with all her bravery 
on and tackle trim,'' she gracefully sailed the 
uncertain seas, met the enemy, and — was she 
his ? Hancock, fretting his heart out at Philadel- 
phia, receives scant consideration in these critical 



222 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

days. He writes to her frequently, but awakens 
no response. " My Dr. Dolly/' he protests in a 
letter dated June 10th, " I am almost prevailed 
on to think that my letters to my aunt & you 
are not read, for I cannot obtain a reply, I have 
ask'd million questions & not an answer to one, I 
beg'd you to let me know what things my Aunt 
wanted & you, and many other matters I wanted 
to know, but not one word in answer. I Really 
Take it extreme unkind, pray my Dr. use not so 
much Ceremony & Reservedness, why can't you 
use freedom in writing, be not afraid of me, I 
want long Letters ... & I Beg, my Dear Dolly, 
you will write me often & long Letters, I will 
forgive the past if you will mend in future. Do 
ask my Aunt to make up & send me a Watch 
String, & do you make up another & send me, I 
wear them out fast. I want some little thino" of 
your doing." ..." Adieu my Dr. Girl," he 
concludes, " and believe me to be with great 
Esteem & Affection. Yours without Reserve, 
John Hancock." 

It was a deplorable dissonance, virtuously we 
say it, the while a vagrant sentiment persuasively 
hints it was all so natural, so inevitable, so pretty, 
as to seem a subtly woven note in a preexistent 
harmony. Slide it might not, however, into a 
pitch so strident as to shake down with its vibra- 
tions a single pillar in the temple sacred to the af- 
fections of the troth-plighted couple. Capricious 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 223 

Dorothy, the essential loyalties of her nature un- 
touched, turned with glad abandon to the altar 
where the steady flame of heart-felt and heaven- 
born love burned clear. The music and mirth of 
the marriage-day submerged and swept away all 
aben elements, and blithe was that midsummer 
progress through a sympathetic land to the tem- 
porary home in Philadelphia. What luminous 
glimpses we catch of their joy in one another, and 
of their happy, patriotic toil in those tumultuous 
days ! Fortunate were they to whom it was given 
to see the beautiful Dorothy presiding with inborn 
grace and dignity as the mistress of the estabHsh- 
ment of John Hancock, president of the Continen- 
tal Congress. Then, when they returned to the 
stately Hancock mansion in Boston, what gener- 
ous hospitality they dispensed ! For the honor 
of the town in its poverty they kept open house, 
feasting the officers of the French fleet forty at 
a time, welcoming them and their crews with un- 
failing cheer, when, in mischievous spirit, they 
mob in a multitude the mansion, and the " com- 
mon is bedizzened with lace." Washington, 
Lafayette, John Adams, Lords Stanley and Wort- 
ley, and other notables not a few, are received 
royally, and the finest part of their entertainment 
is ever the sight of the face and the form of 
their hostess. 

'* When in the chronicle of the wasted time 
I see description of the fairest wights 



224 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, 
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights; 

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, 
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 

I see their antique pen would have expressed 
Even such a beauty as you master now." 

For eighteen years they hved thus together. 
Two children were born to them, and, to their 
unspeakable grief, early passed away. On Octo- 
ber 8, 1793, John Hancock himself died. His 
widow remained single for three years, and then 
was married to James Scott, a trusty sea captain, 
who had long sailed the ships of Hancock. The 
romance of her life was ended, but in happiness 
and content she spent the rest of her days. 
" She outlived her second husband many years," 
writes A. E. Brown in "John Hancock, His 
Book," resided for a time at Portsmouth, N. H., 
and later in Federal Street, Boston. As Madam 
Scott she delighted the people by her unfailing 
memory of the heroic past and brilliant powers of 
conversation. Hospitality was a characteristic of 
hers at her Federal Street home. Her table was 
always laid with an extra plate for any one who 
might call, and fourscore years did not rob her 
of her native dignity. Says Mrs. William Wales : 
" I often ran into Aunt Dorothy's from school 
at noon intermission, when the extra plate was at 
my service, and the venerable woman ready to 
greet me with a smile." On the 3d day of 
February, 1830, the gift of God, Dorothea, was 
returned to Him. 




DOROTHY HANCOCK 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 225 

The throne occupied in such queenly manner 
by Dorothy Hancock remained vacant after her 
death. There were other Dorothys, but none 
sufficiently eminent to be her successor and com- 
mand such universal homage. The Dorothy Q. 
who was born to Henry Quincy and Eunice 
Newell, his second wife, in 1775, was an excel- 
lent lady, and the ancestor of some of the most 
highly regarded famihes in New England. The 
record of her birth made by her father, who, in 
the first year of the Revolution fled from his 
home, corner of Winter and Washington streets, 
Boston, to Providence, R. I., is interesting. 
" Sept. /75, 28th. This day at two o'clock God 
in his Providence was pleased to Grant Deliver- 
ance to my wife of a Daughter which was Christ- 
ened at the Presbetery Meeting House in Provi- 
dence and Christened by the Rev. M. Lathrop by 
the name of Dorothy in memory of sister Dorothy 
Hancock." 

This Henry Quincy, who was some twenty 
years older than his sister Dorothy, was called 
the handsomest man in Boston when he married 
his first wife, Mary Salter. By her he had a 
daughter Mary, who married Dr. John Stedman 
in 1773, and after his death for second husband 
William Donnison. Descendants of their chil- 
dren are living and honored to-day. The Dorothy 
of Henry's second marriage also had a second 
husband, Jabez Bullard, the ancestor of the Bid- 



226 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

lards and the Doggetts, and so a connection of 
the Rev. Dr. Caleb Davis Bradlee, whose long 
and useful career in Boston is fresh in the mem- 
ory of its citizens. 

Still another "Dorothy Q." remains to be men- 
tioned, for the very important reason that she 
elicited from Dr. Holmes a second " Dorothy Q." 
poem. The sister of the poet, Mrs. Upham of 
Salem, had a son who was named Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes. He in turn became the father of a 
little ofirl whom he named after the heroine of the 
portrait. Dr. Holmes, when made aware of this, 
wrote the following verses : — 

" Dear little Dorothy, Dorothy Q., 
What can I find to write to you ? 
You have two U's in your name, it 's true, 
And mine is adorned with a double U. 
But there 's this difference in the U's, 
That one you will stand a chance to lose 
When a happy man of the bearded sex 
Shall make it Dorothy Q. -|- X. 

" May Heaven smile bright on the blissful day 
That teaches this lesson in Algebra ! 
When the orange blossoms crown your head, 
Then read what your old great-uncle said, 
And remember how in your baby-time 
He scribbled a scrap of idle rhyme — 
Idle it may be — but kindly too, 
For the little lady, — Dorothy Q. ! " 

And still the name is perpetuated, and still the 
Hue it adorns stretches out as if to make conquest 
of a dateless future. There is a " Dorothy Q." of 




"DOROTHY Q." OF TO-DAY 



DOROTHY Q. AND OTHER DOROTHYS 227 

to-day. She inherits directly from the ancestors 
of all the Dorothys, and herself bears the name in 
its original simplicity. A daughter of the late 
Dr. Henry Parker Quincy of Dedham, her ascent 
is through Edmunds and Josiahs to the Judge 
Quincy who was the father of Dr. Holmes's 
" Dorothy Q./' and so back to the beginnings of 
her race in a mingling of worthy progenitors. 
Through her mother, also, Mary Adams Quincy, 
she is heiress to the sterling virtues of that kin- 
dred line. 

Thus the name fails not, nor can the qualities 
which have exalted the fame of it fail. In pre- 
sent power, as well as remembered puissance, 
" Dorothy Q." reigns. Long live Dorothy ! 



X 



TUTOR FLYNT, NEW ENGLAND S EARLIEST 
HUMORIST 

Facetious was rare old Tutor Flynt ; scholarly 
and shrewdly practical, too, but above all a wit, 
a humorist. So was he regarded by his contem- 
poraries, and so has he been esteemed by every 
generation since. He is, in fact, the first among 
grave New England men with enough genial 
humor in him to become famous. Others of his 
day, and earlier, gleamed now and then, as sheet 
lightning through sombre clouds, with a certain 
grim jocularity; and not a few, as Samuel Sewall, 
Captain Underbill, and Cotton Mather, were at 
times unconsciously and irresistibly funny. But 
the Tutor, in the humane fibre of him, was by 
happy foreordination and deliberate personal 
intention a humorist. He had in him enough 
natural vivacity, not infrequently explosive, to 
temper or astound the austerity and solemnity of 
a century of the primal Puritanism of Massachu- 
setts Bay Colony. Indeed, his repartees and 
hrusqiierie comprised about all of the salt current 
in the small talk of his time. Was it not the 
fame of the Tutor, as much as anything else, 



TUTOR FLYNT 229 

which drew Harvard men with eager anticipation 
to Commencement and other college functions ? 
Certainly it is hard to see in the endless preaching 
of those occasions, to say nothing of " three-mile 
prayers an' half-mile graces/' sufficient to compete 
with Father Flynt's "• latest." And to-day among 
those conversant with New England traditions a 
smile is awakened whenever his name is men- 
tioned, and a pleasant reminiscence or two speeds 
to the tip of the tongue, craving to utter itself. 

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes had a deep appre- 
ciation of the Tutor, and was frequently referred 
to as the depositary of all that is worth telling 
about him. Some who should know think he 
wrote a poem in honor of the cheerful old gentle- 
man. If such be extant, the writer has failed to 
find it. Possibly it may be the one he wrote " in 
wondrous merry mood," which tickled its readers 
into such cachinnatory convulsions as induced 
the confession, — 

" And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can." 

Dr. Holmes and the Tutor were distantly con- 
nected, — " cousins in the fourth remove," as 
Bailie Nicol Jarvie said of his relationship to 
Rob Roy. How consonant with optimistic views 
of heredity it would be to think of our loved 
poet as in " the line of conveyance " from that 
old-time wit to the Professor at the Breakfast- 



230 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Table ! How agreeable it would be to trace in 
his genial humor, in his swift, searchlight expo- 
sure of lurking incongruities, the exuberant wit 
of his Puritan predecessor in lambent refinement ! 
But we are not permitted to delight ourselves 
in so notable an example of the transmission and 
evolution of genius. Tutor Henry Flynt died a 
bachelor. What was directly and indubitably 
transmitted was of a less personal character. A 
silver teapot is the priceless heirloom which Dr. 
Holmes received from the hands of his distant 
connection. Perhaps he fell heir to other articles 
of value ; but this he regarded as of surpassing 
worth. He thus fondly refers to it when pre- 
sented with a loving cup by Harvard students in 
his later days : — 

"This gift of priceless value to me and to 
those who come after me will meet another and 
similar one of ancient date which has come down 
to me as an heirloom in the fifth generation 
from its original owner. The silver teapot which 
serves the temperate needs of my noontide refec- 
tion has engraved upon it, for armorial bearings, 
three nodules, supposed to represent the mineral 
suggesting the name of the recipient, the three 
words. Ex Bono Pupillorum, and the date, 1738. 
This piece of silver was given by his Harvard 
College pupils to the famous tutor, Henry Flynt, 
whose term of service, fifty-five years, is the longest 
on the college record. Tutor Flynt was a bache- 




TUTOR FLYNT 



TUTOR FLYNT 231 

lor, and this memorial gift passed after his death 
to his niece, Dorothy Quincy, who did me the 
high honor of becoming my great-grandmother. 
Through her daughter and her daughter's daugh- 
ter it came down to me, and has always been held 
by me as the most loved and venerated relic which 
time has bequeathed me. It will never lose its 
hold on my affections, for it is a part of my ear- 
liest associations and dearest remembrances." 

It is to President John Adams, however, that 
we are chiefly indebted for the preservation of 
the most interesting foibles and witticisms of 
Henry Flynt. He, too, was taken with the 
surprising contrasts exhibited by this mellow 
phenomenon among the hard and grim "meeting- 
going animals " of the Puritan settlement. In a 
sense they were neighbors or fellow townsmen. 
John Adams was twenty-five years old when the 
Tutor died, and as a boy he must have heard him 
preach his occasional sermon in the old Braintree 
meeting-house, and, as a young man, have seen 
him in his study in the old Quincy mansion. No 
one, indeed, was more talked about in the quiet 
country village, then nourishing "the mighty 
heart " of the masterful advocate of independ- 
ence, than old Father Flynt. Many a dull hour 
between sermons of a Sunday, or of a week day 
at the tavern, or by the home hearthstone, was 
pleasantly whiled away by tales, more than twice 
told, of his quaint ways and words ; and when his 



232 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

familiar figure was descried on horseback, or in 
the old calash, approaching along the country 
road on his journey from Cambridge, a ripple of 
interest ran through the town. 

How was it, may be the natural inquiry, that 
Tutor Flynt came to have a second home, or 
study, or retreat, so far away from the shades of 
Harvard ? His sister Dorothy was the wife of 
Judge Edmund Quincy, then owner and occu- 
pant of the Quincy mansion in Braintree. Be- 
sides, the north precinct of old Braintree (now 
Quincy) was the seat of his ancestors, almost 
from its first settlement, and away back he was 
related to the Quincys. The Tutor's grand- 
parents were Teacher Henry Flynt of the old 
Braintree (now Quincy) First Church and Mar- 
gery, his wife. This Margery was sister to Joanna 
Hoar, who married Colonel Edmund Quincy, son 
of the Edmund who, first of the Quincy name, 
came to these shores. So it will be seen he was 
among his own kith and kin. His father, Josiah 
Flynt, born in Braintree, was settled as minister 
over the First Church in Dorchester, December 27, 
1671, and took to wife Esther, daughter of Cap- 
tain Thomas Willet, first mayor of the city of 
New York. Their first child was Henry, the 
subject of this sketch, who was born May 5, 1675. 
He graduated at Harvard in 1693, and in 1705 
began his surpassing career as permanent tutor 
in the college. 



TUTOR FLYNT 233 

Whatever attractions his birthplace, Dorchester, 
may have had for him, they were swept away by 
the current of memory and affections which drew 
him to old Braintree. Dorothy was his only 
living sister, and their relations appear to have 
been tender and mutually helpful. It was prob- 
ably not long after her marriage to Edmund 
Quincy, in 1701, that there was built for her 
brother a two-story lean-to on the north side of 
the mansion, containing a study and a chamber. 
Here he long continued to have occasional resi- 
dence, and found the only real home he ever 
knew in maturer years. The rooms overlook the 
brook, and into them steal the pleasant sounds 
of the falling waters, — a soothing melody to lull 
to sleep by night, a liquid monotone to deepen 
meditation by day. And the immemorial willows, 
^' huge trees, a thousand rings of spring in 
every bole," line the farther banks, sifting the 
golden sunlight into luminous green shade. Ah, 
it is a retreat for the repose of the spirit ! And 
for this purpose was it used, says tradition, by the 
teacher and scholar, wearied w4th his unvarying 
tasks and rebelling against the baiting of the 
unlicked cubs of the college and the stupid con- 
troversies of that dull age. The study is on the 
ground floor, and has its own separate entrance, 
so that he might go in and out without disturb- 
ing the other inmates of the mansion. With its 
open fireplace, its undisturbed quiet, its book- 



234 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

shelves within easy reach, it is a place to grow 
wise in. A steep flight of winding stairs leads 
to the chamber directly overhead. Indeed, it was 
just the retired and separate establishment to suit 
a whimsical and scholarly old bachelor. 

From these pleasant precincts he vanished more 
than a century and a half ago ; but visible traces 
of him are still there on the floor of the little study. 
A sHght depression from wall to wall was worn, 
it is said, by the ceaseless tread of his feet as he 
paced forward and back again in black, restless 
mood. As in many another humorist, a deep, irre- 
pressible element of melancholy mingled with the 
lighter vein. " I fell into a hypocondial disorder,'' 
he wrote in his diary. Dark weather and much 
company and talk often predisposed to this, as 
did more effectually threatened blindness. " God 
hath been pleased to deprive me of the sight of 
one of my eyes," he wrote in 1719 ; and later on 
he writes as if the disorder were confirmed and 
chronic. He is suspicious also that much smok- 
ing may induce his melancholy turns, and ground 
is not wanting for the suspicion. " I believe," 
he writes in 1714, " I have been of late hurt by 
much Smoaking Tobacco, two pipes in forenoon 
& 2 or 3 in afternoon & 4 or 5 at night. This 
w^ere surely noxious to melancholy and erring 
bodily. Moderation in this and moderate exer- 
cise are necessary for me. I shall not be suffi- 
ciently moderate in smoak unless I wholly omit 




> 

O 

H 



TUTOR FLYNT 235 

it in forenoon.'' With such a habit, it is not to 
be wondered at that sister Qiiincy fell in with 
the idea of a separate establishment all to him- 
self. The only wonder is that she permitted the 
cutting of doorways from both chamber and 
study, giving entrance to the main house. But she 
had deep sisterly affection for her erratic brother, 
and abated nothing in her care of him. In his 
distressful times he drinks " a portion of a sutle 
Physick " of her compounding, and quaffs fre- 
quent libations of "good cider" from the presses 
of brother Edmund. His habiliments also have 
the benefit of her supervision. For a coat he 
" had 10 yds. of Camblet of Sister Quincy at 5 
sh. per yard." It was no small contract to keep 
a confirmed bachelor and smoker up to the cler- 
ical standard, and so the daughter of " Bishop " 
Hancock of Lexington was invited to take a 
hand in fulfilling it whenever she could capture 
him at his college residence or in clerical meet- 
ings at her father's house. Perhaps a vague 
hope was entertained in the Quincy domicile and 
beneath the " Bishop's " roof that the helpless 
bachelor was fair game and might be led into 
perpetual captivity. Here is a sample of items 
scattered through his diary : " Paid Mr. Han- 
cock's Daughter 1 sh. for new ristbanding three 
shirts ; " " Paid Mr. Hancock's daughter 2 sh. 
6 d. for making three neckcl. & necks ; 6 d. for 
the neckcloaths made out of old ones & 4 d. for 



236 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

the necks." It was about this time that the 
brother of Miss Hancock became the pastor of 
the Braintree church, and a frequent visitor, of 
course, at the Quincy mansion. Before taking 
leave of their domestic economies, it is but fair 
to state that the Tutor was not ungrateful for 
benefits received. From his abundant means, 
thriftily hoarded, he now and then loaned brother 
Edmund good sums of money; and we come upon 
such records as this : " 1722 mem. I gave sister 
Quincey 10 sh. or 10 sh. 6 d. to buy Plates Tea dishes 

6 Saucers. She bought only plates & Tea dishes, 

7 sh. so that 3 sh. is now due to me. The saucers 
being returned I bought again." Was he deter- 
mined she should have all the dishes she wanted, 
even if she felt she could n't afford them ? 

When Henry Flynt began his career, he was 
counted one of the most promising scholars in 
the colony. He seems, however, to have held in 
slight regard the few black-coat prizes of his day. 
In 1718 he was invited " to become Rector of 
the newly named Yale College." He preferred 
his tutorship, and according to all accounts he 
most faithfully performed its duties. His teach- 
ing abilities were of a high order, and his sound 
judgment was much depended upon in the ad- 
ministration of the affairs of the college ; but he 
fairly wore out the patience of the authorities 
before he gave up, at the age of seventy-nine. 
Promptly upon his resignation, the governing 



TUTOR FLYNT 237 

board voted " that no person chosen hencefor- 
ward into the office of tutor shall abide therein 
more than eight years." 

Why was it that what President Quincy called 
^^ the inconvenient experiment of a tutor seventy- 
nine years of age " was tolerated so long ? It 
was because the Tutor had himself become an 
institution. For how many years had he been 
the marked man of the college, the embodiment 
of its use and wont, the one fixed element in the 
flow of generations, the genial source of original 
wit, the natural recipient of the exuberant greet- 
ings of returning alumni, not forgetful of his 
good-easy advocacy of their delinquencies as 
" wild colts that might make good horses ! " 
Who else among the tutors and professors was 
honored as he, not only with gift of silver teapot, 
but with other argent utensil borne in hilarious 
procession by the undergraduates on a memorable 
Commencement day ! Yet wdthal he was full 
of learning, diligent in business, and a moving 
preacher, " with a most becoming seriousness and 
gravity peculiar to him." 

In a story which he tells of himself, he reveals 
what manner of man he was and the secret of his 
hold upon his pupils. At the same time a glimpse 
is afforded of the way instruction was imparted 
in his day. " One morning my class were recit- 
ing, and stood quite around me, and one or two 
rather at my back, where was a table on which 



238 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

lay a keg of wine I had the day before bought 
at Boston ; and one of the blades took up the 
keg and drank out of the bung. A looking 
glass was right before me, so that I could plainly 
see what was doing behind me. I thought I 
would not disturb him while drinking; but as 
soon as he had done I turned round and told 
him he ought to have had the manners to have 
drunk to somebody.'' 

His mild and practical temperament influenced 
his theology, an effect more apparent it may be 
in his familiar talk than in his public preaching. 
In his printed sermons (sold by S. Kneeland and 
T. Green in Queen Street, Boston, 1739), one 
may perchance find an entirely modern sentence 
like this : " God having made man a rational 
Creature, he treats him as such ; He requires 
nothing of him but what is agreeable to his 
nature, and conducive to his happiness." But 
for the most part he proses monotonously on 
with the droning clericals of that day, who never 
dreamed of imitating their Maker and treating 
man as a rational creature. It was the ice age 
in New England's religious history, as Charles F. 
Adams, the younger, so emphatically reiterates ; 
an edelweiss at the foot of the retreating glacier 
is the blossom or two we discover in the writings 
of the Tutor. Hardly anywhere else is there 
visible new thought vital enough to force its way 
through the frozen crust. His was a soul pro- 



TUTOR FLYNT 239 

phetic o£ the age to come, — his tolerant temper 
perhaps, even more than his ideas, in advance of 
his time. In this regard he was alone, alone ! 
His resort was to practical topics and to silence. 
Sometimes it appears as if his brusque wit were 
flung out as a Kne of defense to mask opinions 
which would imperil him. Heresy ran in his 
blood. He came of heterodox stock. His grand- 
father, settled with Pastor Thompson over the 
old Braintree church, was for a period under 
condemnation for his support of the Antinomian 
heresy ; and his father was charged with " utter- 
ing divers dangerous heterodoxies, delivered, and 
that without caution, in his public preaching." 
The family trait persisted in the Tutor ; but he 
had learned to envelop in it that element of 
caution which his father lacked, restrained him- 
self to be silent, and lived much within him- 
self. Still he did not escape. His very aloof- 
ness was suspicious. When in his earlier days 
a parish was minded to call him, objection was 
made that he was not sound. All the reply he 
vouchsafed was, " I thank God they know no- 
thing about it." 

What other resort than to remain silent had a 
rational creature in those days, when stupidity 
was cultivated by artificial selection ! It was a 
mark of his sanity and genuine soundness. The 
arch-stupid, as Carlyle often vociferated, is after 
all your true arch-enemy of human weal and pro- 



240 WHERE MIERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

gress. Argument has no effect upon him, facts 
lose their potency in his presence. Kidicule and 
wit alone penetrate this primordial pachyderm, 
and then only to irritate and arouse to bestial rage. 
Confronted by it, here is the attitude adopted by 
the Tutor, as described in his own handwriting : 
" In this controversy keep Charity & Justice. 
Keep silence, even when you shall beforehand 
conclude yourself called to speak." What con- 
troversy was in his mind we have no means of 
knowing. The people of that day, after the de- 
feat of Sir Harry Vane and the cruel banishment 
of other high-thinking " Antinomians," were sub- 
merged in a sea of theological futilities. Judge 
Sewall, one of the ablest and most liberal-minded 
persons then in the colony, lets us into a know- 
ledge of them in taking our Tutor to task for 
saying " Saint Luke and Saint James, etc." when 
reading or quoting Scripture. " I have heard it 
from several," declares the judge, " but to hear 
it from the Senior Fellow of Harvard College is 
more surprising, lest by his example he should 
seem to countenance and authorize Inconvenient 
Immoralities." That last phrase is good : " In- 
convenient Immoralities" does so magnify the 
trifle in debate ! Not content with writing 
him, the judge lies in wait for the Tutor and 
captures him in Boston after the Thursday lec- 
ture. Home he must go to the judge's dinner, 
and there they have it out. This is the record 




>- 

►J 

o 

H 
D 
H 



TUTOR FLYNT 241 

left by the judge : " He argued that saying Saint 
Luke was an indifferent thing ; and 't was com- 
monly used ; and therefore he might use it. Mr. 
Brattle used it. I argued that 't was not Scrip- 
tural ; that 't was absurd and partial to Saint 
Matthew, &C.5 and not to Saiiit Moses, Saint 
Samuel, &c. And if we said Saint we must go 
through and keep the Holy days appointed for 
them, and turned to the order in the Common 
Prayer Book." Wise Mr. Flynt, not to care for 
any of these things ! " Religion in the substance 
of it," declared a contemporary. Dr. Appleton, of 
the First Church, Cambridge, " seemed always 
to be near his heart ; and whilst he had a very 
catholic spirit, not laying that stress upon dis- 
tinguishing forms and modes of worship, . . . 
he laid great stress upon the substantial parts of 
religion, the weightier matters of the law and 
gospel, such as judgment, mercy, faith, and the 
love of God." Exquisite for point and for rebuke 
of intolerance was his prompt repartee in a com- 
pany of gentlemen where Whitefield, the revival- 
ist, was leading the conversation. " It is my 
opinion," said Whitefield, " that Dr. Tillotson is 
now in hell for his heresy." ^' It is my opinion," 
retorted Tutor Flynt, " that you w411 not meet 
him there." 

His humor seems to have been of the explosive 
sort described by Dr. Johnson, " something which 
comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither 



242 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly- 
consistent with true politeness." But it had point, 
and that saved him from suppression when impo- 
lite, as in his retort upon Whitefield, and from 
oppression when indifferent to accepted creeds. 
The streaming character of his wit, to use a phrase 
of Emerson's, also floated him, kept him " in the 
swim," when by a highly proper and discriminat- 
ing social instinct he was doomed to stranding 
and entire isolation for eccentric persistence in 
the state of " single blessedness." The measure 
of this handicap, which his ruling genius had to 
overcome, may be gathered from the careful state- 
ment in the funeral oration of Dr. Appleton, 
from which we have already quoted. " To say 
that he was without his foibles and failings would 
be to say more of him than can be said of the 
best of men. But any of them that were observ- 
able I doubt not were owing in a great measure 
to that single state in which he lived all his days ; 
which naturally begets in men a contractedness 
with respect to their own private and personal con- 
cerns." As he uttered these words, how could 
even a Puritan preacher refrain from regarding 
the women of his congregation with one auspi- 
cious, and the men with one drooping eye ? 

However, we have kept the reader too long 
from that most graphic description of the Tutor 
contained in the account of his journey to Ports- 
mouth, N. H. This was written down at the 



TUTOR FLYNT 243 

request of John Adams by his classmate, David 
Sewall, who accompanied the old bachelor on his 
trip. The affair was transacted in June, 1754, 
Mr. Flynt being then eighty years of age and 
Sewall nineteen. 

" He sent for me to his chamber in the old 
Harvard Hall, on Saturday afternoon," wrote 
Sewall ; " being informed that I was an excellent 
driver of a chair, he wished to know if I would 
wait upon him. ... I replied the proposition 
was to me new and unexpected and I wished for 
a little time to consider of it. He replied, ' Aye, 
prithee, there is no time for consideration ; I am 
going next Monday morning.' " At Lynn, their 
first stopping place, " Mr. Flynt had a milk 
punch," for it was a warm forenoon. By night- 
fall they reached Rowley, where they were enter- 
tained by Rev. Jedediah Jewett, who put them 
both in one bed, which was all he had unoccupied. 
The next day, Tuesday, at old Hampton, they 
fell in with parson Cotton walking on foot with 
his wife. Mr. Flynt informed him " that he 
intended to have called and taken dinner with 
him, but as he found he was going from home 
he would pass on and dine at the pubhc house. 
Upon which says Mr. Cotton, ' We are going to 
dine upon an invitation with Dr. Weeks, one of 
my parishioners ; and (Rev.) Mr. Gookin and 
his wife of North Hill are likewise invited to 
dine there ; and I have no doubt you will be 



244 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

as welcome as any o£ us.' The invitation was 
accepted. 

" After dinner, while Mr. Flynt was enjoying 
his pipe^ the wife of Dr. Weeks introduced her 
young child, about a month old, and the twins of 
Parson Gooldn's wife, infants of about the same 
age, under some expectation of his blessing by 
bestowing something on the mother of the twins 
(as was supposed), although no mention of that 
expectation was made in my hearing ; but it pro- 
duced no effect of the kind. After dinner we 
passed through North Hampton to Greenland ; 
and after coming to a small rise in the road, hills 
on the north of Piscataqua River appearing in 
view, a conversation passed between us respect- 
ino- one of them which he said was Frost Hill. 
I said it was Agamenticus, a large hill in York. 
We differed in opinion and each adhered to his 
own ideas of the subject. During this conversa- 
tion, while we were descending gradually at a 
moderate pace, and at a small distance and in full 
view of Clark's Tavern, the ground being a little 
sandy, but free from stones or obstructions of 
any kind, the horse somehow stumbled in so sud- 
den a manner, the boot of the chair being loose 
on Mr. Flynt's side, threw Mr. Flynt headlong 
from the carriage into the road ; and the stoppage 
beino; so sudden, had not the boot been fastened 
on my side, I might probably have been thrown 
out likewise. The horse sprang up quick, and 



TUTOR FLYNT 245 

With some difficulty I so guided the chair as to 
prevent the wheel passing over him ; when I 
halted and jumped out, being apprehensive from 
the manner in which the old crentleman was thrown 
out, that it must have broken his neck. Several 
persons at the tavern noticed the occurrence and 
immediately came to assist Mr. Flynt ; and after 
rising, found him able to walk to the house ; and, 
after washing his face and head with some water, 
found the skin rubbed off his forehead in two or 
three places, — to which a young lady, a sister 
of William Parker, Jr., who had come out from 
Portsmouth with him and with some others that 
afternoon, applied some pieces of court plaster. 
After which we had among us two or three 
single bowls of lemon punch, made pretty sweet, 
with which we refreshed ourselves, and became 
very cheerful. The gentlemen were John Wen- 
dell, William Parker, Jr., and Nathaniel Tread- 
well, a young gentleman who was paying suit to 
Miss Parker. Mr. Flynt observed he felt very 
well, notwithstanding his fall from the chair ; 
and if he had not disfigured himself, he did not 
value it. He wovild not say the fault was in the 
driver ; but he rather thought he was looking too 
onuch on those hills ^ 

The party went on its way towards Ports- 
mouth. " The punch we had partaken of was 
pretty well charged with good old spirit, and 
Father Flynt was very pleasant and sociable. 



246 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

About a mile distant from the town there is a 
road that turns off at right angles (called the 
creek road) into town, into which Mr. Treadwell 
and Miss Parker (who afterwards married Captain 
Adams) entered with their chair. Upon which 
Mr. Fljnt turned his face to me and said, ^ Aye, 
prithee, I do not understand their motions ; but 
the Scripture says. The way of a man with a 
maid is very mysterious.' " 

On the return journey Mr. Flynt was destined 
to hear aofain of " Parson Gookin's wife's twins." 
Indeed, it would seem as if a conspiracy had been 
entered into by the ladies of Hampton to way- 
lay the old bachelor as he wended homeward 
and compel him to give that silver blessing. At 
Hampton Falls he planned to dine with the Rev. 
Josiali Whipple. 

" But it so happened the dinner was over, and 
Mr. Whipple had gone out to visit a parishioner, 
but Madam Whipple was at home, and very social 
and pleasant, and immediately had the table laid, 
and a loin of roasted veal, that was in a manner 
whole, placed on it, upon which we made an 
agreeable meal. After dinner Mr. Flynt was 
accommodated with a pipe ; and while enjoying 
it Mrs. Whipple accosted him thus : ^ Mr. Gookin, 
the worthy clergyman of North Hill, has but a 
small parish, and a small salary, but a consider- 
able family ; and his wife has lately had twins.' 
' Aye, that is no fault of mine,' says Mr. Flynt. 



TUTOR FLYNT 247 

' Very true, sir, but so it is/ And as he was a 
bachelor, and a gentleman of handsome property, 
she desired he would sfive her somethinsf for Mr. 
Gookin ; and she would be the bearer of it, and 
faithfully deliver it to him. To which he replied : 
^I don't know that we bachelors are under an 
obligation to maintain other folks' children.' To 
this she assented ; but it was an act of charity 
she now requested for a worthy person, and from 
him who was a gentleman of opulence ; and who, 
she hoped, would now not neglect bestowing it. 
' Madam, I am from home on a journey, and it 
is an unreasonable time.' She was very sensible 
of this ; but a gentleman of his property did 
not usually travel without more money than was 
necessary to pay the immediate expenses of his 
journey, and she hoped he could spare something 
on this occasion. After some pause he took from 
his pocket a silver dollar and gave her, saying it 
was the only Whole Dollar he had about him. 
Upon which Mrs. Whipple thanked him and en- 
gaged she would faithfully soon deliver it to Mr. 
Gookin ; adding it was but a short time to Com- 
mencement . . . and she hoped this was but an 
earnest of a larger donation. . . . Father Flynt 
replied, ' Insatiable woman, I am almost sorry I 
have given you anything.' " However, he fully 
reimbursed himself at the expense of the next 
minister's wife he met. In the evening he 
stopped at the home of Kev. Nathaniel Rogers in 



248 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Ipswich, who introduced him to his wife, where- 
upon Mr. Flynt exclaimed, " Madam, I must buss 
you ! " and gave her a hearty kiss. " In the 
morning we had toast and tea. He was interro- 
gated by Mrs. Rogers whether he would have the 
tea strong or weak, that she might accommodate 
it to his liking. He replied that he liked it strong 
of the tea, strong of the sugar, and strong of the 
cream ; and it was regulated accordingly." 

The same day the Tutor and his Bos well ar- 
rived in Cambridge, and the journey was ended. 

It was in this year of his journey that he 
resigned his tutorship. By this time death had 
so chano^ed affairs in the old home in Braintree 
that no harbor offered itself there in which to 
end his days. So, upon leaving his chambers in 
the old Harvard Hall, he went to reside near by 
at the Widow Sprague's. Not long after, he fell 
sick. His wonted humor, however, never deserted 
him. John Adams records in his diary (1759) 
that Mr. Marsh (of Braintree) says : " Father 
Flynt has been very gay and sprightly this sick- 
ness. Colonel Quincy went to see him a Fast 
Day, and was, or appeared to be, as he was about 
taking leave of the old gentleman, very much 
affected ; the tears flowed very fast. ' I hope,' 
says he in a voice of grief, ' you will excuse my 
passions.' ' Aye, prithee,' says the old man, ' I 
don't care much for you, nor your passions 
neither.' Morris said to him, ^ You are going, sir, 



TUTOR FLYNT 249 

to Abraham's bosom ; but I don't know but I 
shall reach there first.' 'Ay, if you go there, I 
don't want to 2:0.' " 

In spite of these comforters, Tutor Flynt lin- 
gered on till the 13th of February, 1760, when 
he passed away, in the eighty-fifth year of his 
age. He had a peaceful ending and a notable 
funeral. On the day of interment a brief funeral 
oration was dehvered by James Lowell, in Hol- 
den Chapel, "On the Truly Venerable Henry 
Flynt; " and on the Sunday following a sermon 
was preached in his honor in the First Church, 
by Mr. Appleton, on "The Blessedness of a 
Fixed Heart." 



XI 

PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 

QuiNCY is not wholly a town of the past in its 
more interesting aspects. It is also a city of the 
present, full of life, — simmering, indeed, with 
the incalculable and transforming energy of the 
times. The obliterating march of modern progress 
has not spared scenes and homes dear to the 
" oldest inhabitant," but many historic places 
remain untouched, and what is new is not by any 
means to be ignored. A perambulation of Quincy, 
revealing all this, will be its own reward. Does 
the antiquarian, well satisfied to remain with the 
picturesque generations among whom American 
Independence began, wish further warrant for 
such an undertaking ? He will find it in the 
example of Sir Walter Besant, who has " The 
Perambulation of the City and its Suburbs " in 
his " Survey of London." The London of the 
New World it was early predicted Quincy would 
be. No less a person than the explorer who first 
set his eyes upon this favored spot. Captain John 
Smith, wrote on his map of the coast the name 
of England's greatest city all over the region 
now within the bounds of Quincy. 




H 

W 

u 

> 

u 

5 
o 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 251 

The anticipation has been fulfilled in one 
respect at least : since 1889 Quincy has been a 
city. The change from a town government was, 
however, a doubtful transaction, entered into 
under the compulsion of a large increase in pop- 
ulation ; and the returns from the " consensus 
of the competent " are not so overwhelming as 
to establish the wisdom of it. In the old New 
England town meeting every man is conscious 
of his sovereignty and counts for all he is worth, 
and all business and elections are done above- 
board and by unquestioned majorities. Simple, 
direct, and democratic, this form of govern- 
ment is the norm and ideal of free institutions. 
Nothing as good as itself can be devised to take 
its place. 

The town meeting in Quincy was always pre- 
served in its original strength and simplicity, but 
in the later years of its existence it came to its 
highest estate. It was held in the granite Town 
Hall, which, unchanged externally, still fronts 
the training field square, with its wide spaces 
and massive Stone Temple. To be a freeman in 
such an assembly, the equal of any, unfettered 
in speech or vote, an observer of the quick play of 
thought, the wise deliberation of important ques- 
tions, the surprises of individual characteristics, 
was an exhilaration. So citizens and statesmen 
were made ; and ladies were permitted to sit in 
the gallery and see the process. 



252 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Then, too, — an important factor, — the mod- 
erator, unanimously chosen year after year, was 
John Quincy Adams. His vigorous guidance 
of business, his swift and wise decisions, his wit, 
his fairness toward all, his masterful retention of 
long strings of amendments, his discomfiture of 
the mere obstructionist, his patient indulgence 
of the inexperienced, was as fine a bit of pre- 
siding as one w^ould wish to see. Early in his 
twenty years' career as moderator he was instru- 
mental in bringing into the meetings a measure 
of dignity and order not known in their previous 
history. From time out of mind the sovereign 
citizens of Quincy had stood about wdth hats on, 
and when not especially interested in the item of 
business just then under consideration would talk 
of crops and candidates. Mr. Adams changed 
all this. Seats were brought in, hats were re- 
moved, and with George L. Gill, the perennial 
and faithful town clerk, at his right hand, and 
the chairman of the Committee of Fifteen at his 
left, all was done decently and in order. 

That Committee of Fifteen, appointed to ex- 
pedite business, was the nucleus of a characteristic 
group which came to be known as the " Wisdom 
Corner." Edwin W. Marsh, frequently chairman 
of the committee, went into that left-hand cor- 
ner, for the reason that it was easy there to catch 
the attention of the moderator, to face the meet- 
ing, and to watch the course of business. Charles 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 253 

F. Adams, the younger, quickly discerned the 
convenience of the situation and followed; so 
did John Quincy Adams Field, William G. A. 
Pattee, George F. Pinkham, Horace B. Spear 
(town treasurer for seventeen years), Warren W. 
Adams, Rupert F. Claflin, Colonel Abner B.Pack- 
ard, Theophilus King, James H. Slade, and many 
others who, if not guilty of " indecent exposure 
of intellect," were admittedly quahfied to sit 
in the " corner." Its astuteness challeno-ed all 
measures in the interest of economy and con- 
servative government ; it was almost a higher 
chamber in the very heart of a lower one. 
" Though many people spoke lightly of the 
Wisdom Corner in those days," writes one, " I 
believe that now, after their experience with a 
city government, they would be very glad to have 
the Wisdom Corner take another turn at it." 

Another institution of the town meeting was 
Henry H. Faxon, temperance agitator, reformer 
of politicians, " millionaire pohceman," pubhc 
benefactor. Over forty times by actual count he 
is said to have spoken at a single session. He 
required no advantage of place or support of fol- 
lowers. "Single and alone" he was an irrepres- 
sible centre of explosive energy, now controvert- 
ing the " Wisdom Corner," and now castigating 
for its indifference the entire assembly. But his 
severest critics admit, however reluctantly, that 
this " intemperate advocate of temperance " has 



254 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

been always on the side of decency and order, 
honesty and good government. Chiefly through 
his efforts Quincy, since 1881, has been a " no- 
hcense town," and it is altogether owing to his 
personal watchfulness and persistence in prose- 
cuting offenders that prohibition has not been a 
farce, but a fact. Fearlessly, in the capacity of 
volunteer constable without pay, he has ventured 
alone, in the night as well as the day, to ferret 
out " rum-sellers " in the lowest dens. Liberally 
he has given time and wealth for the furtherance 
of his principles, spending a fortune for " the 
cause." A characteristic form of his generosity 
is to contribute annually to all the Sunday schools 
in Quincy large amounts for the Christmas and 
other entertainments of the children. He is a 
genuine product of the rugged, independent old 
Quincy settlers (his ancestors were among the 
earliest English immigrants), peculiar in the pic- 
turesque Yankee way, restless under the ceaseless 
exactions of the New England conscience. He 
is a "character," who, besides his other achieve- 
ments, has certainly made the life of his ancient 
town more interesting. 

But the town meeting, in which Mr. Faxon 
was seen at his best, came to an end. The Town 
Hall could not hold the citizens for the multitude 
o£ them, and even the great barn of a skating- 
rink proved inadequate. A new form of govern- 
ment was imperative, but the change was made 




HENRY H. FAXON 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 255 

with reluctance. All felt that it was a critical 
moment in the history of the old town. 

The assembly which met in the Town Hall to 
inaugurate the new government was not large, 
and lacked enthusiasm. Altogether it was a life- 
less affair, with little to indicate the importance 
of the occasion. Should it be permitted to end 
so ? The minister of First Church, immediately 
upon the close of the exercises, called out " Father 
Flint," the old white-haired sexton, and directed 
him to ring the bell in the grand historic edifice. 
But what should it be, — a peal of joy or toUing 
as for the departed ? " Father Flint " was of the 
past, and plainly depressed. Uncertain what to 
do, he rang once, and then paused to expostulate. 
Urged to go on, and assured that it was all right, 
he laboriously pulled the rope again. The bell 
was tolling, — there was no doubt of that, — 
toUing for the passing of the town of Quincy, 
for the close of an epoch in which it had been 
famous among the towns of the Commonwealth. 
A memory now was that town to be, — a memory 
of a life and a time never to be repeated. Gone 
were the simple ways and the strength of them, 
— gone the quiet, unhasting life, the unques- 
tioned faith, the sturdy devotion to duty; gone 
the plain honesty, the humble romance, the high- 
hearted patriotism, the rugged independence, the 
social equality, of the town of John Adams (the 
son of a cordwainer), and of " Colonel " Quincy, 



256 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

and of the Basses and Baxters, the Savilles and 
Spears. And the white-haired sexton in his 
feebleness and uncertainty was tolling the bell. 
Plainly this would never do. A young man, 
Walter B. Holden, stepped forward to relieve 
" Father Flint." Youth and optimism now rang 
a vigorous peal for the new city of Quincy. 
The plangent sounds flooded the square (once 
the training field), stirring the hearts of the 
people pouring from the City Hall, as they had 
quickened the pulses of their forefathers in the 
victorious days when Independence was declared 
and the sons of Quincy triumphed on the field or 
in the senate. They were flung far and wide to 
the granite hills, to the shores of the sea, to the 
farms, to the shops, to the remote villages. They 
chanted to the future a defiant faith snatched 
from the struggling light of these unintelligible 
days. They drowned in their clamor the fears 
which will arise from a life transitional between 
two worlds, — one parochial in its secluded and 
changeless homogeneity, the other cosmopoli- 
tan, and swayed by the vast forces of inven- 
tive and competing globe exploiters. Not too 
desperate is the hope, they seemed to say, that 
Quincy the city may fulfill a destiny as sublime 
and beneficent as Quincy the town. 

The form of government of the city was ham- 
mered into ideal shape through long winter 
months, particular attention being given to the 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 257 

features of " personal responsibility," " single 
chamber/' and other modern devices to circum- 
vent the self-seeking and the delinquent. Charles 
H. Porter had the honor to be elected the first 
mayor. He has been succeeded by Henry 0. 
Fairbanks, William A. Hodges, Charles F. Adams, 
2d, Russell A. Sears, Harrison A. Keith, John 
0. Hall, and Charles M. Bryant, now (1902) in 
office. The city is well launched on a sea not 
too turbulent, but just enough to put to the test 
the virtues of its citizens. 

In the perambulation of the city — too long 
delayed by unavailing regrets over the accept- 
ance of it — no better place to start from is 
afforded than the summit of Penn's Hill. Not 
only is it a commanding height on one of the 
sides of the city, but there the past and the 
present harmoniously meet. On this eminence, 
the 17th of June, 1896, the Adams Chapter of 
Quincy of the Daughters of the Revolution laid 
the corner-stone of a cairn to the memory of 
Abigail Adams. A beautiful day with clear- 
est atmosphere, the multitude which was gath- 
ered on the o^ranite ledgi'es of the hill could look 
over the town and across the bay to where in 
the haze of the metropolis Charlestown lay, and 
the tall shaft of Bunker Hill pierced the sky. 
From this view, much like that which fell upon 
the eyes of Abigail Adams so many years before, 
the assembly was called to give its attention to 



258 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

the interesting exercises appointed for the day. 
They were conducted by Mrs. N. V. Titus, re- 
gent of the chapter, through whose efforts the 
enterprise had been assured and all arrange- 
ments for the ceremonial perfected. Addresses 
were delivered by Charles F. Adams, 2d, then 
mayor of Quincy, Edwin W. Marsh, Charles F. 
Adams, the younger, and Miss Elizabeth Porter 
Gould. The corner-stone, contributed by the 
Swithin Brothers, is a beautiful block of polished 
granite made from a sleeper of the oldest railway 
in the country, — that built in 1826 from the 
Quincy quarries to the Neponset River, for the 
conveyance of stone to be used in the construc- 
tion of Bunker Hill Monument. At the laying 
of it Abigail Adams, daughter of John Quincy 
Adams, presided with silver trowel ; and when 
she had accomplished her part, various patriotic 
societies and individuals contributed stones, prized 
for their associations, which were built into the 
cairn till it reached its monumental proportions. 
Colonel E. S. Barrett, President of the Sons of 
the American Revolution, brought a stone from 
the Concord battlefield, Mrs. Abbie B. Eastman 
brought one from Lexington battlefield, John H. 
Means, a connection of Samuel Adams, brought 
one from Dorchester Heights, Hon. James Hum- 
phrey brought one from the home of Abigail 
Adams in Weymouth, and so did Rev. Robert 
R. Kendall, the present successor of Rev. William 




ABIGAIL ADAMS CAIRN 




BIRTHPLACE OF PRESIDENT JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 259 

Smith, Abigail's father. Then there were con- 
tributions from the foot of the Washington Ehn 
by George Eastman of Cambridge, and from 
North Bridge, Salem, by Miss Helen Philbriek, 
and from historic Hull by Miss Floretta Vining, 
and thus one after another these memorial stones 
were wrought into a structure unique among the 
monuments of the country. A beautiful bronze 
tablet with the following inscription was given 
by Charles F. Adams, the younger : — 

" From this spot, with her son John Quincy 
Adams, then a boy of seven by her side, Abigail 
Adams watched the smoke of burninof Charles- 
town while listening to the guns of Bunker Hill, 
Saturday, June 17, 1775." 

Little more than a stone's throw eastward 
from the summit of Penn's Hill is one of the 
more picturesque quarries of Quincy, the large 
crater-like cavity of the pink granite quarry, 
memorable to the writer and many others as the 
scene of the labors of one of Quincy's former 
residents, George B. Wendell. He was of the 
famous Wendell stock, a sea captain and son of 
Portsmouth, N. H., who in his later years re- 
strained his adventurous spirits to forsake the 
free world of the great waters and the rule of 
the quarter-deck to " boss " a quarry gang in the 
bowels of the earth. As true a man as ever 
breathed, was the universal acclaim when he 
passed away, — one whose life deepened faith in 
humanity. 



260 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

From tlie side of the bill in the neio-hborhood 
of this quarry one can look down into Wey- 
mouth Fore E/iver, the salt-water inlet which 
separates Weymouth and Quincy. Here are sit- 
uated the extensive Fore River Ship and En- 
gine Company's Works, where battle-ships and 
torpedo-boats are built with all modern celer- 
ity and skill, and where was recently launched 
the seven-masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson. 
What astounding fulfillment is this of predic- 
tions made by John Adams and others that the 
Quincy seaboard, so convenient for ship-build- 
ing, would some day be the scene of a great 
development of this industry ! The first vessel 
built in Quincy was launched from ways on a 
creek now included within the Fore River Com- 
pany's plant, but the point near Germantown 
has been the location most prized. Here was 
Deacon Thomas's shipyard, where in the old 
day, a marvel for size, an 800-ton vessel was 
constructed. John Souther, too, had a ship- 
yard at what is now known as Johnson's wharf, 
on Town River ; and Dr. Woodward was so con- 
vinced that Black's Creek, drained at every ebb 
of tide, was a good haven for vessels and their 
making that in his will he invited especial atten- 
tion to the matter. But how far beyond all that 
was ever done or dreamed is the development at 
Fore River ! It is the largest element in the 
creation of the new Quincy, transforming the 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 261 

pretty roads and shores of the Point into a bus- 
tling, " booming " industrial centre. 

Quincy is said to have a more sinuous and 
deeply indented shore than any other town or 
city in Massachusetts. Follow it round from 
Fore River to the Neponset, which divides 
Quincy from Boston, and what various scenes 
of quiet beauty meet the eye ! Points of quite 
human interest there are also : the magnificent 
electric light plant at Brackett's wharf, where 
Henry M. Faxon, the manager, produces more 
illuminating power than could be measured by 
all the spermaceti candles made by his Hardwick 
ancestors in the Germantown of the old day; 
the Sailors' Snug Harbor at Germantown, in 
which Captain C. P. Jayne, who has sailed the 
seven seas, cares for the other ancient mariners ; 
the summer settlement at Hough's (pronounced 
Hoff's) Neck, with its fleet of yachts and its plea- 
sant clubhouse ; Merry-Mount, the home of Mrs. 
John Quincy Adams, where hill and shore retain 
unchanged the natural beauty roistering Mor- 
ton looked upon ; the National Sailors' Home, 
refuge of infirm naval heroes, whose comfort is 
made sure by Lieutenant Downes. So we come 
to Squantum, romantic and historic, whose cliffs 
look upon old Dorchester Bay and Boston. Here 
Myles Standish and a party from Plymouth — 
piloted by Squanto, the faithful friend of the 
white man — landed, September 30, 1621. In 



262 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

commemoration of this fact a cairn has been 
built on the highest part of the stone ridge, 
which on the east dips to the sea and on the 
west decHnes to " Massachusetts Hummock " and 
its meadows. On Monday, September 30, 1895, 
the corner-stone was laid and the services of 
dedication celebrated in the presence of a large 
assembly. Charles F. Adams, the younger, de- 
livered the address of the occasion, once more 
showing his interest in the historic places of 
Quincy. He described the voyaging of Myles 
Standish and his men from Plymouth, and did 
not fail to pay a fine tribute to Squanto, for 
whom Squantum is named. Mrs. William Lee, 
Regent of the Daughters of the Revolution of 
Massachusetts, also made an address, and she 
and Mr. Adams laid the corner-stone. The 
Quincy Historical Society and the Bostonia So- 
ciety participated in the exercises, and were 
represented by many members. The leading 
spirit of the occasion, however, was Mrs. N. V. 
Titus, who presided, gave the address of welcome, 
and entertained the guests at her home near by. 
Indeed, it was entirely owing to her interest in 
the historic places of her picturesque neighbor- 
hood that the enterprise was conceived and car- 
ried out. 

Standing by the cairn one may not only enjoy 
a good view of Boston harbor, gemmed with its 
islands, but looking inland he sees the rugged 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 263 

hills which from any point along the shore form 
the background of Quincy. Observing these 
hills closely, he will discern what appears to be 
masts rising from their summits. They are the 
derricks of the granite quarries. Who has not 
heard of Quincy granite ? At one time thought 
to be the only stone Boston should use in the 
erection of its more dignified edifices, and now 
considered to be unsurpassed for polished work. 
As early as 1749 this granite was utiHzed, but 
at that date only surface boulders were broken 
up and wrought into shape. King's Chapel in 
Boston was built of this material between 1749 
and 1752, and it was thought to be so limited in 
quantity that the town became alarmed, and by 
vote forbade its further removal until otherwise 
ordered. Later, however, enough was secured 
to construct the famous old Hancock mansion on 
Beacon Hill. " The difficulty seems to have 
been,'' writes Mr. Adams in his " Three Epi- 
sodes," " that, with the tools then in use, they 
were unable to work into the rock. The King's 
Chapel stone, it is said, was broken into a degree 
of shape by letting iron balls fall upon the heated 
blocks. At last, upon one memorable Sunday in 
1803, there appeared at Newcomb's Tavern, in 
the centre of the North Precinct, three men, who 
called for a dinner with which to celebrate a feat 
they had just successfully performed. The fear 
of the tithingman not restraining them, they had 



264 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

that day split a large stone by the use of wedges. 
Their names were Josiah Bemis, George Stearns, 
and Michael Wild. It was indeed a notable 
event, for the crust of the syenite hills was 
broken." Later Solomon Willard and Gridley 
Bryant, two remarkable men, greatly advanced 
the industry. Bunker Hill Monument was to be 
built, — an immense contract. They were stim- 
ulated to invent new methods. " While Willard 
laid open the quarry and devised the drills, the 
derricks, and the shops, Bryant was building a 
railway. This famous structure marked an epoch, 
not only in the history of Quincy, but in that of 
the United States ; and in every school history 
it is mentioned as the most noticeable event dur- 
ing the administration of the younger Adams." 
On this first railway of the United States, operated 
by horse power, the first cars were run October 
7, 1826. From quarry to tide-water the stone 
was carried, not only for Bunker Hill Monument, 
but for Minot Ledge Lighthouse and many a nota- 
ble structure beside. The railway was demolished 
years ago, its roadbed bought and utilized by the 
Old Colony system ; but the quarry still produces 
abundance of granite, and the " Granite Railway 
Company " still conducts an increasing business, 
laying modern rails to yet other ledges. Luther 
S. Anderson, son of the schoolmaster so well 
known in Boston a decade ago, Luther W. An- 
derson, is its enterprising manager. 




o 

> 
> 






PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 265 

Numberless are the other quarries which have 
been opened in these granite hills. Great eleva- 
tions are being leveled, and the very " roots of 
the mountains " are being torn out, but the sup- 
ply is inexhaustible. Stone sheds for the ham- 
mering and polishing of the obdurate material 
have multiplied, so that within the last twenty 
years these and the houses of the workmen have 
quite altered the face of the country. New vil- 
lages have sprung up in the meadows, and the 
rugged hillsides have been sprinkled over with 
habitations. 

Through industry and enterprise of a high 
order were the quarries developed and the shap- 
ing and handling of the stone brought to their 
present perfection. Little enough, it is some- 
times thought, has this advantaged Quincy. It 
has fatefully changed the character of the com- 
munity, making it more of an industrial centre. 
This may well disturb those who love the old 
scenes and the old ways, and who looked for 
a different development. All the cosmopolitan 
camaraderie he may assume is hardly sufficient to 
reconcile the ordinary native to the disappearance 
of " neighbors " in the " foreign invasion," the 
multiplication of unpronounceable names on the 
voting lists, and the consequent increase of taxa- 
tion for the additional number of schoolhouses 
needed to educate the abundant progeny of the 
unsophisticated or improvident proletariat from 



266 WHEKE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

over the water. But this is the condition of 
things which most communities in this land of 
Hberty and of " unparalleled prosperity " have 
to face. It may be that if we are chary neither 
of our sympathy nor of our honesty, what is best 
in those escaping from the ancient wrongs of the 
Old World will rise up to meet us. Swedes and 
Norwegians are now swelHng the invasion. Who 
will deny that they possess sterHng virtues in 
large measure? And the thrifty Scot "from 
Aberdeen awa' " has already made his religious- 
ness and ethical persistence felt. 

Whatever the effect of the quarries upon 
Quincy's future, this at least is to be said : that 
we have in the men who have had most to do 
with the development of them persons who would 
add to the strength of any community. From 
the earliest times they had in a marked degree the 
intelligence needed to extend their business to 
about all the large cities and towns of the coun- 
try, and the virtues which go to the making of 
good citizens. There was Henry Barker, eager for 
all moral and educational reforms ; and Charles 
Henry Hardwick, a true lover of nature and syl- 
van sports ; and Patrick McGrath, the philoso- 
pher and friend of James Martineau, the great 
English thinker; and honest Amos Churchill and 
ex-Councilman George L. Miller ; and besides 
these many more, both of the past and the pre- 
sent, — the Wrights, the Mitchells, the Fields, 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 267 

the Fallons, the Badgers, the McDonnells, and 
Messrs. Hitchcock, Wild, Craig, Kichards, Mc- 
Gillvray, Vogel, Jones, and. John Thompson and 
his more famous son James. 

Having fetched a compass round about the 
outer limits of the city and caught a glimpse of 
its far-extending and verdure-clad uplands, and 
its sinuous shores bathed by the shining sea, we 
should now be prepared to traverse the heart of 
it. Let it not be imagined, however, that we 
are to be led through a man-made wilderness of 
brick and mortar and granite pavement. Quincy 
fortunately retains still, even in its populous 
parts, the natural beauty of the New England 
town. Its thoroughfares are roads and lanes. 
The old Centre, with its " God's acre '' asleep in 
the greenwood shade, its stately granite temple 
of worship dominating the wide grass-sown spaces 
and broad highways which surround it, its city 
hall Roman in strength and severity of outline, 
and its fountain with the bubbling water brim- 
ming its ample rim, is to all appearances a village 
square. The old Hancock Tavern is there yet, — 
somewhat changed, to be sure (its yard filled up 
with a line of stores), but much the same as when 
Daniel Webster, journeying to Marshfield, used 
to descend from the mail coach to drink to the 
"inanes of the place and to the comfort of his own 
majestic frame. And just across the way is the 
simple homestead of Henry H.Faxon, who bought 



268 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

the tavern as the only way to circumvent " mine 
host," who would persist in dispensing liquid 
refreshment. Mr. Faxon's house is on the corner 
of Coddington Street, and opposite it is an ancient 
landmark, — the little wooden cottage in which 
since time out of mind the Quincy Mutual Fire 
Insurance Company has had its offices. Cramped 
the officials find themselves in spite of frequent 
extensions ; but President Charles A. Howland 
seems to consider that what he has done in the 
way of monument-building to his Pilgrim an- 
cestors is in this hue quite enough. He does 
not feel called upon to inspire the erection of a 
monument to his business. On yet another side 
of " the Square " (it is a triangle) is the Adams 
Block, built by John Quincy Adams a few years 
ago. In it is the Mount Wollaston Bank, upon 
whose board of directors Charles F. Adams, the 
elder, served for a number of years. ' 

AU these buildings face the old training field, 
whose bounds (now obliterated) the late Edward 
H. Dewson patiently searched out and estabhshed. 
For over two hundred and fifty years this spot 
has been the very heart of the community, throb- 
bing with its life, the pulsations of which have 
been transmitted with renewing power to the re- 
motest homes. Originally, it is probable, it was 
part of the Coddington grant, and came by gift 
or confiscation into the possession of the town. 
Its level greensward early invited the militia for 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 269 

the wonderful evolutions of training days, and 
from here the raw levies of hardy farmers went 
forth to fight the Indians, the French, the red- 
coats, and the Confederates. What would we 
not give to possess a " snap shot " of Colonel 
Quincy and Lieutenant John Adams at the head 
of their picturesque array ! Alas, the days of the 
camera came in as the men and the events worth 
photographing went out ! Added interest was 
imparted to the training field October 8, 1732, 
when a new meeting-house was built upon it by 
the old First Society. To be more correct, the 
town built it, for then the church and the town 
were one. This was the Hancock meeting-house, 
which lasted for almost a hundred years, when it 
was superseded by the present Stone Temple, 
w^hich was dedicated November 12, 1828. The 
historic character of this dignified edifice becomes 
with every passing year more exalted in the pub- 
lic mind. Already the number of visitors who 
wish to view the interior has increased to such an 
extent as to embarrass the sexton and the parish 
committee. The beautiful marble tablets in mem- 
ory of the Presidents and their wives, and the 
sarcophagi beneath the portico are certainly of 
interest to the multitudes who in these days are 
increasing their knowledge of America's heroic 
generations. And recently Mr. Edmund M. 
Wheelwright of Boston has placed one more ob- 
ject of interest in the church, — a fine bronze 



270 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

tablet in memory of his sturdy old ancestor, the 
Rev. John Wheelwriofht. 

From the training field square roads branch 
off in all directions. Near by on Washington 
Street, which goes to " the Point," is to be seen 
the charming Crane Memorial Hall, which con- 
tains the Thomas Crane Public Library and the 
library bequeathed to the town by John Adams. 
Thomas Crane came of " pure old New England 
stock/' bearing the Quincy hall-mark. In his 
blood was the strength of the Savils and Baxters. 
His fathers for three generations back were born 
in Quincy, but he himself was born on George's 
Island, in the harbor, on the 18th of October, 
1803. Not long after, his parents returned to 
the mainland, and in the primitive schools of 
Quincy he received all the pedagogic training 
destiny allotted him. At the age of twenty-six, 
as we read in Mr. Adams's admirable address at 
the dedication of the hall, Thomas Crane went 
to New York, a journeyman stonecutter, active, 
self-reliant, and ambitious. Here he soon became 
a master workman, and eventually one of the 
leading stone contractors of the city. " During 
nearly thirty years of as active construction as 
any great city ever saw, there were few buildings 
of- magnitude erected in New York, in which 
granite was used, to which Thomas Crane did 
not contribute, and which did not contribute to 
him." His wealth rapidly increased, and for his 




THOMAS CRANE 




CRANE MEMORIAL HALL 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 271 

clear, shrewd common sense and sterling honesty 
positions of honor and trust were abundantly 
conferred upon him. Throughout his life he 
retained a deep affection for Quincy, and after 
his death Mrs. Crane and her two sons gave to 
the town the perfect bit of architecture named 
in memory of him. While she hved Mrs. Crane 
manifested great interest in the Hbrary, and at her 
death left $20,000 to be devoted to the care of 
the building and the grounds and to the purchase 
of works of art. Her son Benjamin Franklin 
Crane has also passed away, and in his memory a 
beautiful window has been placed in the hall. The 
other son, Albert Crane, is still living. His home 
is in Stamford, Conn. 

Opposite the Crane Memorial Hall is to be 
erected the new government building. It can- 
not fail to add greatly to the appearance of this 
locality and to awaken anticipations of the de- 
velopments yet to be made in the heart of the 
city. 

Along the line of the old Plymouth road, now 
called Hancock Street, the square seems to ex- 
tend itself, — so wide is the thoroudifare, — 
past the new colonial building of the Quincy 
Savings Bank to the imposing Bethany Congre- 
gational Church. Continuing in this direction 
one comes to the offices of the solid old "Quincy 
Patriot," a newspaper, not a person, with a lin- 
gering aroma of village days and colonial hero- 



272 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

worship. Adjoining is the garden spot of the 
Centre, the greenhouses and shrubbery of Col- 
onel Abner B. Packard. Beyond is the " Hol- 
low/' where the town brook passes under the 
road, a place for tanneries in the old days, but 
greatly improved now by the fine business blocks 
of Durgin and Merrill and Henry L. Kincaide, 
and the lar^e brick Music Hall. And so we 
come to a place where four roads meet, and 
which might be called Liberty Tree Square ; for 
here, as John Adams tells us, a liberty tree was 
planted in the fervent first days of the Revolu- 
tion. Measures were taken to guard its growth, 
but if it survived till independence was won, no 
record of tliat fact remains. Perhaps it was 
planted in this spot because the Brackett Tavern, 
the house of fashionable resort in Revolutionary 
times, as W. S. Pattee tells us in his history, 
stood prominently on one of the corners. It is 
there now, altered into a commodious dwelling- 
house, long owned and occupied by John S. Wil- 
liams, and at present by Dr. John F. Welch. 

On the opposite corner is the pretty stone 
" Christ Church," the place of worship of one of 
the oldest Episcopal societies in New England. 
It may indeed be called the oldest, for King's 
Chapel, which preceded it by but a few years, 
has been a Unitarian church for over a century. 
As early as 1689 there were gatherings of Church 
of England people in Braintree North Precinct, 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 273 

now Quincy, and organization was formally ef- 
fected in 1701. An exotic among New England 
Congregationalists, it had a hard struggle for ex- 
istence, in which it displayed a persistence equal 
to that which was manifested anywhere by its 
opponents. Not far from Christ Church, on that 
part of the winding Plymouth road which is now 
called School Street, is yet another church which 
commands attention. It is St. John's Catholic 
Church, the largest of that faith in Quincy ; the 
mother church it might be called, as its clergy 
have gone out into other parts of Quincy and 
established and maintained new houses of wor- 
ship as they were required. The oldest Catholic 
Church is, however, St. Mary's at West Quincy. 

Across the way from St. John's Church is the 
residence built by that rugged and honest " forty- 
niner " James Edwards, on the site of the 
Cranch house, where lived the companion of John 
Adams and where the first post-office was located. 
Later the Greenleafs, who intermarried with the 
Cranches, made this their home. From here one 
might continue his perambulation along the old 
Plymouth road past the place where Joseph 
Marsh had his school, to the birthplaces of the 
Presidents and the old-fashioned homestead of 
the Fields. The temptation is strong, however, 
to linger for a moment at the hospitable residence 
of James H. Stetson, so long the home of his 
father, Dr. James A. Stetson. 

w 



274 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

Dr. Stetson, born in Braintree in 1806, was, 
when he died, in 1880, not only the oldest prac- 
titioner in Norfolk County, but the last of the 
physicians who, in the old-fashioned imperious 
way, attended to the ills of the entire town. One 
minister for the cure of souls and one doctor for 
the cure of bodies was the ancient order up to 
his day. He was the true successor of Drs. Wil- 
son and Savil and Phipps and Woodward, as Mrs. 
A. E. Faxon shows in " A Brief Record of the 
Physicians of Quincy," and wisely and kindly 
did he reign. Some time before his death the 
increase of popidation invited other physicians 
to share his labors, and in 1862 Dr. John S. 
Gilbert, so skillfid, sympathetic, and disinter- 
ested, began his long career. " The beloved phy- 
sician " he was to thousands, a description which 
may well be applied to about all of the medical 
gentlemen who have practiced their profession in 
Quincy. Affectionately one recalls Dr. Joseph 
Underwood, manly and unselfish, who settled 
here after his devoted services in the war for the 
Union, and scholarly Dr. James F. Harlow, and 
Dr. James Morison, great of stature but tender 
and gentle as any woman. Dr. John A. Gordon, 
still in active performance of his professional 
duties, came to Quincy from the Harvard Medi- 
cal School and the Boston Hospital in 1871. 
Of all the physicians of the city he has been 
here longest ; he is the " Dean of the Faculty." 




JOHN ALEXANDER GORDON, M. D. 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 275 

Notwithstanding the exacting nature of a large 
practice, he has shown himself a model citizen 
by lending his aid to public improvements and 
heartily cooperating with Mr. William B. Rice in 
the planning and establishment of the City Hos- 
pital. He does not stand alone, however, in this 
regard among his fellow physicians. Dr. Joseph 
M. Sheehan, Braintree born, a Harvard graduate 
and student of Paris universities, has wisely 
served the town as chairman of the Board of 
Health and member of the School Committee. 
With these gentlemen we cannot fail to mention 
Dr. S. M. Donovan, the first city physician, cut 
down by death in the prime of his powers, Dr. 
John F. Welch, Dr. Frank S. Davis, Dr. W. H. 
Record, Dr. S. W. Garey, Dr. Henry C. Hallo- 
well, Dr. N. S. Hunting, and Dr. S. W. Ells- 
worth. 

Rising from the centre of the city, all its 
streets and homes and fields, away to the in- 
dented shore, spread out before it, is Presidents' 
Hill. A view unsurpassed by any to be obtained 
in other parts of the suburbs of Boston is to be 
enjoyed from its summit. Almost a dozen cities 
and towns are in sight, indicated by the steeples 
of their churches or their clustered houses, all 
set in an ideal New England landscape, — the 
rugged hills behind and the infinite expanse of 
the changeful sea before. This is the prospect 
the Presidents dehghted in, and from his home, 



276 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

built upon the very crown of the gently sloping 
hill, Charles Francis Adams the younger daily 
rejoiced in it. To his sorrow he was forced to 
abandon the charms of the place, both those seen 
with the sight of the eyes and those suggested 
by the associations of centuries, " driven from a 
home of two hundred and fifty years by the 
steady, irresistible advance of what the world is 
pleased to call modern improvements." Like an 
exile, almost, he must feel in the town of Lincoln, 
to which he has removed. But his regret over 
the enforced change can hardly be keener than 
that of the older residents of Quincy, with whom 
he was so ready to labor for all real improve- 
ments. 

However, his broad acres have been carved 
into ample plots on curving roads, and fine homes 
of the newer Quincy are now adorning the hill- 
side. Across the way from Mr. Adams's old 
home, occupied by Mr. Herbert Lawton, is the 
spacious and artistic residence of Mr. William B. 
Bateman, and near by are the beautiful places of 
W. T. Babcock, Herbert F. McLitire, A. W. Par- 
ker, and W. E. Blanchard. Presidents' Lane, 
which is the way John Adams used to take morn- 
ing and evening to see the sun in its rising and 
setting, has long been one of the prettiest of 
country roads, and on it were built about all the 
houses which enjoyed the advantages of the hill. 
Parson Lunt's house, now occupied by Judge 




ADAMS ACADEMY 




PRESIDENTS' LANE 



PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 277 

E. C. Bumpus, was built there, and near it for 
years has stood the pleasant homestead of Jo- 
seph C. Morse, a leading leather merchant of 
Boston, the comfortable early home of Charles 

F. Adams, the younger, now the residence of 
Edward H. Anger, the house of Professor Jef- 
frey R. Brackett, and that of Mrs. Lane and the 
late Charles Marsh. Now to these have been 
added the modern villas of Hon. John Shaw, 
Clarence Burgin, and A. F. Schenkelberger. 

By Dimmock Street one descends to Hancock 
Street, the part of the old Plymouth road on the 
Boston side of the square. Here is situated the 
Adams Academy, on the site of the Rev. John 
Hancock's parsonage. It was founded by John 
Adams, who in 1823 conveyed by deed of gift 
one hundred and sixty acres of land, from the 
income of which was to be built the Stone Temple, 
and afterwards a building for a school or acad- 
emy. " The deeds by which this property was con- 
veyed," writes Josiah Quincy in his Figures of the 
Past, " were executed at my father's house, and 
my name appears as a witness to the document." 
The academy was built in 1872. The first master 
was William Reynolds Dimmock, LL. D., Law- 
rence Professor of Greek in Williams College, a 
schoolmate and devoted friend of Bishop Phillips 
Brooks. Dr. Dimmock threw himself with the ut- 
most energy into the work of the school, and his 
name attracted pupils from all over the country. 



278 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

For their accommodation the " Hancock House " 
was hired and opened as a boarding-house. 
Dr. Dimmock's exertions entirely overtaxed his 
strength, and he died at the early age of forty- 
three, March 29, 1878. His successor was Wil- 
liam Everett, Ph. D., formerly assistant profes- 
sor of Latin in Harvard College. Dr. Everett 
retained the position till 1893, when he resigned, 
to take his seat in Congress. He was succeeded 
by Mr. William Royall Tyler (A. B. Harvard 
College, 1874), who had been connected with the 
school for nineteen years. The boarding depart- 
ment was now discontinued. Mr. Tyler's ser- 
vice was short, and he died, greatly lamented, 
November 1, 1897, when Dr. William Everett was 
reappointed, who is the present master. 

In the porch memorial tablets are erected to 
Dr. Dimmock and Mr. Tyler. On the outside of 
the schoolhouse is a tablet commemorating the 
fact that on the same spot stood the dwelHng 
wherein was born John Hancock, w^io signed 
the Declaration of Independence as president of 
Congress. 

If one were to continue on the old Plymouth 
road, following in the footsteps of John Quincy 
Adams when as a boy he rode to Boston for 
letters, he would pass over one of the plea- 
santest thoroughfares in New England. Adams 
Street has lonjr been considered the most attrac- 
tive of the Quincy streets. Beginning at the 




p^ 



\ 




PERAMBULATION OF QUINCY 279 

academy and the home of Ex-Mayor Porter across 
the way, it runs past the Adams mansion, the 
ample Beale homestead, the new residence of 
J. H. Emery and that of the late John C. Ran- 
dall, an influential Boston merchant and lover 
of letters. Beyond are the spacious houses of 
Thomas Whicher, William B. Kice, Mrs. E. H. 
Dewson, Mr. T. L. Sturtevant, Mr. H. L. Rice, Mr. 
Timothy Reed, Mr. Theophilus King, Mr. J. L. 
Faxon, Mr. Henry M. Faxon, the City Hospital 
high on a hill away from the road, and so on to 
the comfortable farmhouse of William H. Eaton 
and the Milton line. 

Pleasant, indeed, are these roads and homes of 
the Centre, but they hardly surpass those of 
WoUaston Heights. This region might with 
truth be called the chief residential part of 
Quincy. The houses are built on three command- 
ing hills, which afford not only fine outlooks 
but lend themselves to pleasantly curving roads. 
The first hill is supposed to be the site of Ann 
Hutchinson's farm, and a stone commemorating 
this fact is placed on the grounds of Mr. Wen- 
dell G. Corthell. Appropriate would it have 
been to have named this village Hutchinson 
Heights, as Mr. Adams suggests. " Wollaston 
Heights " is not supported by any associations 
of the place, and is too often confounded with the 
old Mount Wollaston, on the shore. However, 
the name has come to be recognized as that of 



280 WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE BEGAN 

a place pleasant to dwell in, and will probably 
abide. From the " Heights " one looks down 
upon the broad plain of the ancient Massachu- 
setts Fields, — historic ground, where the Rev. 
John Wilson, Boston's earliest minister, was 
granted a large allotment of land. He built 
him a house, the first to be erected in this neigh- 
borhood, which he never occupied. Was the 
liberal atmosphere of the place too bracing for 
the leader of the " leofalists " ? However this 
may be, his descendants lived in the house for a 
hundred years and more, and it stood there, on 
what is still known as the Taylor farm, as late as 
1850. Within sight of it Colonel Quincy built, 
in 1770, the later Quincy mansion, and in recent 
years a companion home was erected for Mr. J. P. 
Quincy. A model school for young ladies has 
established itself in this delightful situation. 
Here, also, the old and the new are intermin- 
gling, a good place in which to end our peram- 
bulation of Quincy. To be sure the half has not 
been seen, — Norfolk Downs and West Quincy 
are quite left out, — but the end has been at- 
tained if a clear picture has been presented of 
a city of ancient fame inspiring modern possi- 
bilities. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Abigail, home of, 68 ; edu- 
cation and marriage, 76 ; on Penn's 
Hill, 86 ; urges independence, 89 ; 
heroism of, 92 ; described by Pre- 
sident Quincy, 95 ; death, 102, 125, 
171 ; cairn, 257. 

Adams, Abigail, of to-day, 145, 258. 

Adams, Abigail B. (Brooks), mar- 
riage, 125 ; services and character, 

130, 138. 

Adams Academy, 103, 138. 

Adams, Brooks, 141, 145. 

Adams, Charles Francis (1807-86), 
public spirit, 75 ; on Monroe Doc- 
trine, 115 ; character, 122 ; mar- 
riage, 125 ; in Congress, 127 ; min- 
ister to England, 127-136 ; Ala- 
bama Claims, 138 ; death, 139 ; 
children of, 141 ; gift to First 
Church, 146. 

Adams, Charles Francis (the 
younger), cited, 12 ; describes 
Thomas Morton, 16 ; Sir Christo- 
pher Gardiner, 19 ; Antinomian 
controversy, 32 ; Wheelwright's 
meeting-house, 36 ; of the " tribe 
of Joanna," 47 ; on Judge E. R. 
Hoar and the " Widow Joanna 
Hoar" scholarship, 57; on com- 
pulsory municipal service, 74 ; 
Abigail Adams on Penn's Hill, 
86 ; England and the Confederacy, 
129 ; his public services, 141-143 ; 
children, 145 ; Abigail Adams 
cairn, 258 ; Myles Standish cairn, 
262 ; granite industry, 263 ; Thomas 
Crane, 270 ; removes from Quincy, 
276. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 2d, mayor 
of Quincy, 145, 257. 

Adams, Elizabeth C, 101. 

Adams, Hannah. 63. 

Adams, Henry (d. 1646), progenitor 
of John and Sam Adams, 12 ; 
settles in Braintree, 27 ; land 
grant confirmed, 43, 62 ; ancestry, 
63, 65. 

Adams, Lieut. Henry, 44, 66. 

Adams, Prof. Henry, son of C. F. 
Adams, 141 ; his " History of the 
United States," 144, 145. 



Adams, Isaac Hull, 101. 

Adams, Deacon John (1691-1761), 
father of President John Adams, 
67 ; death, 73. 

Adams, John (1735-1826), on inde- 
pendence, 2, 11, 39, 71 ; relation to 
Sam Adams, 12 ; ancestry, 63 ; a 
Puritan, 65 ; birthplace, 67 ; mar- 
riage, 76 ; on Writs of Assistance, 
78 ; Stamp Act, 79 ; home life, 81 ; 
defends Capt. Preston, 83 ; ad- 
vanced views on independence, 
84, 88; secures appointment of 
Gen. Geo. Washington, 87 ; trium- 
phant advocacy of independence, 
89; minister to France, 93; fur- 
nishes model of constitution, 94; 
President, 96 ; fails of reelection, 
97; last meeting with Lafayette, 
100 ; death, 101 ; last message to 
his fellow-citizens, 104 ; character, 
106, 136 ; in the household of Ed- 
mund Quincy 172, 211 ; on Tutor 
Flynt, 231, 243 ; founds Adams 
Academy, 103, 277. 

Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848), 
aids Harvard College, 60; de- 
scribes his grandfather, 67 ; birth- 
place, 68 ; baptized, 81 ; on Penn's 
Hill, 86, 107 ; character, 93, 106 ; 
marriage, 110 ; author of Monroe 
Doctrine, 115 ; President, 117 ; 
heroic career as Representative, 
119 ; death, 120 ; how named, 158. 

Adams, John Quincy (1833-94), pub- 
lic services and character, 140, 
141 ; moderator of town meeting, 
252. 

Adams, Mrs. John Quincy, 42, 261. 

Adams, John T., author of " Knight 
of the Golden Melice," 25. 

Adams, Joseph, son of Henry the 
immigrant, 66; marries Abigail 
Baxter, 67. 

Adams, Joseph (2d), marries, 1688, 
Hannah Bass, 67. 

Adams, Louisa Catherine, 141. 

Adams, Mary, daughter of C. F. 
Adams, 141 ; marries Dr. Henry 
P. Quincy, 145, 227. 

Adams, Samuel, 12, 79, 82 ; radical 



284 



INDEX 



ideas on independence, 84, 94; at 
Lexington, 177. 

Adams Street, 27H. 

Adams, Judge Thomas Boylston, 
101, 102. 

Adams, Warren W., 253. 

Adams, Rev. Zabdiel, 172. 

Agassiz, Mrs. Louis, 58. 

Alabama claims, 138. 

Alabama, Confederate cruiser, 132, 
135. 

Alden, Ruth, 67. 

Alleyne, Mary, 186. 

American people, praised by Lafa- 
yette, 64. 

Andros, Governor, 6. 

Anderson, Luther S., 264. 

Anderson, Luther W., 264. 

Antinomian controversy, 32. 

Barker, Henry, 266. 

Barrett, Col. E. S., 258. 

Bass, Hannah, 67. 

Bass, Deacon Samuel, 34; his nu- 
merous offspring, 150. 

Beale, Abigail Adams, 180. 

Beale, Benjamin, 186. 

Belhgerent rights, 129. 

Bethany Congregational Church, 271. 

Besant, Sir Walter, 250. 

Black, Moses, 186. 

Black's Creek, 260. 

Boston Massacre, 82. 

Bowdoin, James, 94. 

Bradford, Gov., describes Thomas 
Morton, 16; capture of Sir C. 
Gardiner, 22. 

Bradlee, Rev. Caleb Davis, D. D., of 
Boston, 226. 

Braintree, cherishes independence, 
11; liberal movement in, 37; in- 
corporated, 43; named, 66; town 
meeting on Stamp Act, 79. 

Briant, Rev. Lemuel, liberal theo- 
logian, 38. 

Bright, John, friendly to the Union, 
131. 

Brooks, Abigail B., marries Charles 
F. Adams, 125. 

Brooks, Peter Chardon, 125. 

Brown, A. E., " John Hancock, His 
Book," 224. 

Bryant, Charles M., mayor of 
Quincy, 257. 

Bryant, Gridley, constructor of first 
railway, 264. 

Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, of Concord, 60. 

Bullard, Jabez, 225. 

Bullock, Capt., Confederate agent, 

133. 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 86, 257 ; mon- 
ument, 258, 264. 
Burr, Aaron and Dorothy Quincy, 

218. 



Burying-gronnd, 43 ; monument 
erected in, by Hon. G. F. Hoar, 
57 ; deed of Joanna Hoar scholar- 
ship dated from, 58. 

Butler, Hon. Peter, occupies Quincy 
Mansion, 189. 

Byles, Rev. Mather, Boston wit, 185. 

Cairn, to Abigail Adams, 257; to 
Myles Standish, 262. 

Canada, J. Q. Adams insists upon 
its annexation, 114. 

Canning, George, 133. 

Catholic Church, St. John's, 273. 

Chamberlain, Mellen, on independ- 
ence, 2. 

Chapel of Ease gathered, 38. 

Charter of Massachusetts, 4-G. 

Chesapeake, fired upon by English 
gunboat, 114. 

Choate, Rufus, "the last of the 
Adamses," 139. 

Christ Church, Episcopal, early 
origin of, 272. 

Church gathered at " the Mount," 
34; liberal, 38; cradle of inde- 
pendence, 39 ; gift of J. Adams 
to First Church, 103. 

Churcliill, Amos, 266. 

Civil service, upheld by J. Q. Adams, 

117. 

Claflin, Rupert F., 253. 

Clay, Henry, 112. 

Cleveland, Pres., 141. 

Cobden, Richard, friendly to the 

Union, 131. 
Coddington, Wm., 27-30; church in 

his farmhouse, 36 ; estate sold, 

45. 
Coddington's Brook, 43. 
Compulsory municipal service In 

Quincy, 73. 
Corbett, Alex., Jr., quoted on Moses 

Black, 187. 
Corthell, W. G., 279. 
Cotton, Mrs. Bridget, 56. 
Cranch, C. P., poem written for 

First Church anniversary, 40. 
Cranch, Judge, 188, 273. 
Cranch, Lucy, 188. 
Cranch, Richard, 40, 75, 158. 
Crane, Albert, 271. 
Crane, Benjamin F., 271. 
Crane Memorial Hall, 143, 270. 
Crane, Thomas, granite contractor 

and son of Quincy, 270. 
Crane, Mrs. Thomas, 271. 
Crowninshield, Fanny Cadwalla- 

der, 141. 

Dana, Richard Henry, biography 

of, 143. 
Daughters of the Revolution, 

Adams Chapter, 69, 257. 



INDEX 



285 



Davis, Admiral Charles Henry, 141. 
Davis, Evelyn, 141. 

Davis, Dr. F. S., 275. 

Davis, Jelterson, comment on iron- 
clads building for the Confeder- 
acy, 133. 

Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, admits alert- 
ness of minister Adams, 130. 

Dawes, Harrison J., 188. 

Decatur, Commodore, visits the 
Quincys, 183. 

Declaration of Independence, 
adopted, 91; foundation of Mon- 
roe Doctrine, 115. 

Dewson, Edward H., bounds the 
training field, 268. 

Dewson, Mrs. E. H., 279. 

Dimmock, Dr. W. K., 277. 

Diplomacy, American, 136. 

Donnison, Mrs. Mary, 178. 

Donnison, Wm., 225. 

Donovan, Dr. S. M. 275. 

Dorothy Q., of to-day, 145, 226; 
Holmes', 148, 164, 198-208 ; Han- 
cock's, 148, 171, 172, 175, 191, 208- 
224; the first, 158; daughter of 
Henry Quincy, 225; daughter of 
Mr. Upham, 226, 

Downes, Lieut, of National Sailors' 
Home, 261. 

Dudley, Dorothy, writes about 
Dorothy Hancock, 218 ; describes 
Aaron Burr, 220. 

Dudley, Gov. Thomas, 22. 

Dudley, Madam, rides with Judge 
Sewall, 155. 

Eastman, Mrs. A. B., 258. 

Eastman, George, 259, 

Eaton, Wm. H., 279. 

Education, the "Quincy System," 
143. 

Edwards, James, 273. 

Edwards, Eev. Jonathan, grand- 
father of Aaron Burr, 220. 

Ellsworth, Dr. S. W., 275. 

Emerson, R. W., quoted, 31, 116. 

Emery, J. H., 279. 

Endicott, Gov., hews the maypole 
at Merry-Mount, 15, 18. 

England, sympathy for the Confed- 
eracy, 128 ; neutrality laws, 133. 

Episcopal Church, planted early in 
Quincy, 272. 

Everett, Dr. Wm., tribute to Mrs. C. 
F. Adams, 131 ; master of Adams 
Academy, 278. 



Fairbanks, Rev. H. F., ancestry of 

Adams family, 63. 
Fairbanks, Henry O., mayor of 

Quincy, 257. 
Fairfield, Conn., place of Hancock's 

marriage, 177, 218. 



Farrar, Prof. John, 60. 
Faxon, Mrs. Annie E., 143, 274. 
Faxon, Henry H., gives a park to 
Quincy, 146 ; public services, 253, 
254 ; home of, 267. 
Faxon, Henry M., 261. 
Faxon, J. L., 279. 
Federalists, 113, 114. 
Field, George H., 68, 273. 
Field, J. Q. A., 253. 
Fifteen, Committee of, 252. 
First Church, gifts to, 103, 146. 
Fiske, John, cited, 88, 89. 
Flint, Jacob, sexton of First Church, 

255. 
Florida, annexation of, 115. 
Florida, Confederate cruiser, 132. 
Flynt, Dorothy, 158, 193, 232. 
Flynt, Rev. Henry, 48, 55, 60, 150, 159, 

193. 
Flynt, Tutor Henry, in Quincy man- 
sion, 163, 197 ; life and character, 
228-249. 
Flynt, Rev. Josiah, 158, 194, 232. 
Flynt, Margery (Hoar), 158; death, 

166, 193. 
Fore River Ship and Engine Co., 

260. 
Forrest, the " Irish Infant," 83. 
Forster, W. E., 131. 
Foster, J. W., " Century of Ameri- 
can Diplomacy," 137. 
Fourth of July, 91; celebration in 

Quincy in 1826, loi. 
Frankland, Sir Charles Henry, 148, 

174,210. 
Franklin, Benjamin, Stamp Act, 8 
Declaration of Independence, 91 
visits Quincy mansion, 172, 178 
gift of vines, 210. 
Freeman, Capt. Isaac, of the Bethel, 

169. 
Free-Soil party, 127. 
Fruitful vine, 149. 

Gardiner, Sir Christopher, 14, 18-26. 

Garey, Dr. G. W., 275. 

Gerrard, Mr., on Sir Harry Vane. 
35. 

Gerry, on Trumbull's picture of the 
signing of the Declaration, 92. 

Ghent, treaty of, 114. 

Ghosts, in Quincy mansion, 187. 

Gilbert, Dr. John H., 274. 

Gill, Geo. L., 252. 

Gladstone, Wm. E., prophesies suc- 
cess of Confederacy, 130. 

Gordon, Dr. John A., 274. 

Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 24. 

Gould, Mrs. Benjamin Apthorp, 184. 

Gould, Elizabeth Porter, 258. 

Granite, Quincy, 263. 

Granite Railway Co., 204. 

Greene, Mrs. D. B., 184. 



286 



INDEX 



Greenleaf, Daniel, 188. 
Greenleaf, Elizabeth, 188. 
Greenleaf, Wm., 173, 273. 
Gienvilles, 1-10. 

Grove, Mary, companion of Sir C. 
Gardiner, 19, 21-26. 

Hale, Dr. E. E., on education, 142. 
Half-way Covenant, 53. 
Hall, John O., mayor of Quincy, 257. 
Hallowell, Dr. H. C, 275. 
Hancock, "Bishop," daughter of, 

235. 
Hancock, Rev. John, 69 ; describes 

Judge Quincy, 159; sermon on 

Judge Quincy, 167. 
Hancock, John, birth, 69 ; baptized, 

72; birthplace, 103, 172, 178, 278; 

courtship of Dorothy Quincy, 213- 

223; death, 22-1. 
Hancock, Madam Lydia, 177, 213- 

223. 
Hancock mansion, 215,262. 
Hancock parsonage, 172 ; destroyed 

by fire, 178 ; site of, 278. 
Hancock, Thomas, 70. 
Hardwick, Chas. H., 266. 
Hardy, Thomas, 220. 
Harlow, Dr. J. F., 275. 
Harod, Ann, 102. 
Harvard College, and Joanna Hoar, 

59 ; Tutor Flynt in, 236, 240, 243, 

248. 
Harvard, John, 59. 
Hatch, Mary, 180. 
Hawthorne, N., 15. 
Hay, Secretary of State, his diplo. 

macy, 137. 
Henry, Patrick, 79, 80, 91. 
Hoar, Bridget, marries Usher, 54. 
Hoar, Charles, husband of Joanna, 

48, 59. 
Hoar, Judge E. R., interest in Jo- 
anna Hoar, 47; Joanna Hoar 

scholarship, 57. 
Hoar, Hon. Geo. F., ancestry, 48; 

visits their English homes, 51 ; 

erects monument in Quincy, 57, 

193. 
Hoar, Joanna (d. 1661), " great 

mother," 47 ; descendants, 48, 194 ; 

death, 56; lives with Judith 

Quincy, 56 ; memorial to, 57. 
Hoar, Joanna (d. 1680), marries 

Edmund Quincy, 46 ; home of, 56, 

147 ; death, 152. 
Hoar, John, 48, 56, 60. 
Hoar, Lavina, 61. 
Hoar, Leonard, 48; president of 

Harvard, 53 ; death, 54, 59, 193. 
Hoar, Margery, 48, 56, oO, 158, 193, 

195. 
Hohart, Daniel, 152. 
Holden, Walter B., 256. 



Holmes, Rev. Abiel, 166, 206. 

Holmes, Dr. O. W., letter about 
Quincy mansion, 162 ; relation to 
" Dorothy Q.," 166, 191 ; letter 
about " Dorothy Q.," 198, 204 : 
poem, 206 ; to Dorothy Q. Upham, 
226 ; on Tutor Flynt, 229. 

Hooker, Rev. Thos., company of, 
27, 34, 65. 

Hooper, Miriam, marries Henry Ad- 
ams. 141. 

Hough's Neck, 261. 

Howe, D. W., quoted, 5. 

Rowland, Chas. A., 268. 

Hull, Hannah, marries Judge Sew- 
all, 44. 

Hull, Isaac, 183. 

Hull, John, marries Judith Quincy, 
44. 

Hull, Judith, death, 46. 

Humphrey, Hon. James, 258. 

Hunt, John, 152. 

Hunt, Ruth, 152, 156. 

Hunting, Dr. N. S., 275. 

Huntington, E. H. Mills, 180. 

Hurst, Ann, 172. 

Hutchinson, Anne, 33, 37. 

Independence, American, 1-3 ; pow- 
er and meaning, 9; especially 
cherished in Quincy, 11; cradle 
of, 39, 68; advocated by .lohn 
Adams, 39; anticipated by Judge 
Quincy, 40 ; when born, 78 ; inevi- 
table, 84 ; Sam Adams on, 84 ; 
urged by Abigail Adams, 89 ; tri- 
umphant, 89 ; Declaration of, 91 ; 
John Adams's last message on, 
104. 

Independence Day, 91 ; celebration 
in Quincy, 1826, 101. 

Industrial combinations and inde- 
dence, 10. 

Iron-clads built in England for the 
Confederacy, 130. 

Jackson, Edward, marries " Doro- 
thy Q., "106; partner of Josiah 
Quincy, 168, 185, 206. 

Jackson, Mary, 186. 

Jayne, Capt. C. P., 261. 

Jefferson, Tliomas, 3 ; no desire for 
independence, 88 ; on speech of 
John Adams, 90 ; reconciled to 
John Adams, 101. 

Jeffreys, Judge, condemns Lady 
Lisle, 50. 

" Joanna," tribe of, 158. 

Johnson, Joshua, 109. 

Johnson, Louisa Catherine, marries 
J. Q. Adams, 109. 

Keith, Harrison A., mayor of 
Quincy, 257. 

Kendall, Rev. R., 258. 



INDEX 



287 



Kincaide, Henry L., 272. 
King, Theophilus, 143, 253. 
King's Chapel, 263. 
Kuhn, Charles, 141. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, praises 
American people, 64 ; last meeting 
with Pres. John Adams, 100. 

Lawson, Thomas W., seven-masted 
schooner, 260. 

Lechford, Thomas, cited, 32. 

"Lee at Appomattox," by C. F. 
Adams, 143. 

Lee, Kichard Henry, 90. 

Lee, Mrs. Wm., 262. 

Lexington, battle of, 1, 216, 219. 

Leopard, English gunboat, fires on 
Chesapeake, 103. 

Library, Adams, 102, 143 ; Crane Me- 
morial, 143. 

Lincoln, Pres. Abraham, birthplace, 
69, 127. 

Lincoln, Dr. Bela, 173. 

Lincoln, Gen. Benjamin, 173. 

Lisle, Lady Alicia, 49-52. 

Lisle, Bridget, marries Leonard 
Hoar, 49 ; H. Usher, 54 ; death, 
55. 

Lisle, Lord John, 49. 

Livingston, Esther, 218. 

Longfellow, H, W., poem on Sir C. 
Gardiner, 19, 25. 

Lowell, James, on Tutor Flynt, 249. 

Lowell, James K., cited, 122, 149. 

Mclntire, H. F., 274. 
McGrath, Patrick, 266. 
Marsh, Charles, 276. 
Marsh, Edwin W., 252, 258. 
Marsh, Joseph, 180, 273. 
Massachusetts, defends her char- 
ter, 6 ; resists oppression, 8 ; origin 
of name, 28; missed a great de- 
stiny, 37 ; constitution of, 94. 
Massachusetts Fields, 28. 
Massachusetts Historical Society, 

57, 143. 
Mather, Kev. Cotton, 54. 
Mather, Increase, 54. 
Mayors of Quincy, 257. 
Maypole erected at Merry-Mount, 

16-18. 
Means, John H., 258. 
Meeting-house, earliest built at " the 
Mount," 36; Hancock's, 99 ; Stone 
Temple, 103, 151, 154, 269, 
Merry-Mount, revels, 15-18; be- 
queathed to John Quincy, 42, 261. 
Merry-Mount Park, gift of C. F. 

Adams, the younger, 146. 
Miller, Geo. L., 266. 
Miller, Dr. Ebenezer, 74. 
Monroe Doctrine, J. Q. Adams au- 
thor of, 115. 



Morison, Dr. James, 274. 

Morse, John T., Jr., cited, 110, 120. 

Morse, Joseph C, 277, 

Morton, Eliza Susan, 182. 

Morton, Thos,, of Merry-Mount, 15- 

18 ; quoted, 29, 
Motley, J, L., 15, 25, 
Mount Wollaston, 14-19, 35. 

National Sailors' Home, 261. 

Navy, U. S., inception of by John 
Adams, 97, 141. 

Neutrality laws, England's inter- 
pretation of, 133, 

New England fai'mers, 64 ; J. Adams 
a typical man of, 65. 

Newell, Eunice, 225. 

No license in Quincy, 254. 

Nourse, H. S,, 51. 

Ogden, Mary, marries C. F, Adams, 

141. 

Otis, James, quoted, 4, 78, 82. 

Packard, Colonel A, B., 253, 272, 
Paine, Elizabeth, marries H, Ad- 
ams, 44, 66. 
Paine, Moses, marries Judith 

Quincy, 43, 66. 
Paine, Thomas, "Common Sense," 

commended by Abigail Adams, 

89, 
Palmer, General Joseph, 178. 
Parker, A. W., 276. 
Parker, F. W,, 143. 
Parker, Captain John, at Lexing- 

ton, 1, 
Parker, Rev. Theodore, on Pres. 

John Quincy Adams, 113, 121. 
" Patriot," the Quincy, 271. 
Pattee, William G, A,, 253. 
Pattee, W. S„ 272. 
Philbrick, Helen, 259. 
Phillips, Wendell, on Sir H. Vane, 

34. 
Phillips, Wm,, 181, 
Pinkham, Geo. F,, 253. 
Point Judith, 45. 
Poison, Mrs. Wm. R„ 103. 
Porter, Chas. H., mayor of Quincy, 

257. 
Portsmouth, N. H., Tutor Flynt's 

journey to, 242. 
Presidents' Hill, 99, 276. 
Purchase, Thos., marries Mary 

Grove, 25. 

Quarries. Quincy granite, 263, 
Quincy, cherishes independence, 12 ; 
meeting place of liberals, 37 ; 
named, 98, 158 ; given library by 
John Adams, 103 ; other gifts, 146 ; 
a city of the present, 250; town 
meetings, 251 ; a city, 251, 255. 



288 



INDEX 



Qiiincy, Abby Phillips, 184. 

Quincy, Daniel, marries Anna Shep- 
ard, 152 ; a goldsmith. 156. 

Quincy, Dorothy, Hancock's, 13, 
171; of to-day, 145, 226. first, 158; 
Holmes's, 164 ; charm of the name, 
191 ; account of all the Dorothys, 
192-227; slster of Tutor Flyut, 
232. 

Quincy, Edmund (the "immigrant," 
1602-35), settles at "the Mount." 
27; in Coddiugton's farmhouse, 
32 ; death, 37. 

Quincy, Edmund (1627-98), marries 
Joanna Hoar, 46, 60 ; life of, 147- 
155. 

Quincy, Judge Edmund (1681-1737), 
early ideas of independence, 40; 
life of, 153-160; builds extension 
to Quincy mansion, 160 ; death and 
funeral, 167 ; marries Dorotliy 
Flynt, 196; letters to daughter 
Dorothy, 200-202; builds L for 
Tutor Flynt, 232. 

Quincy,Squire Edmund (1703-88). oc- 
cupies Quincy mansion, 72 : birth, 
164; Boston merchant, 168; in 
Quincy, 171; letter to Sir H. 
Frankland. 174; retreats to Lan- 
caster, 213 ; sells mansion, 186. 

Quincy, Edmund, marries Ann 
Hurst, 172. 

Quincy, Edmund, son of Col. Josiah, 
172. 179. 

(Juiucy, Edmund, of T^edham, 184. 

Quincy, Elizabeth (Wendell), 164, 
177. 

Quincy, Eli/a Susan, cited, 40, 46; 
letter to Dr. Holmes, 162 ; home 
of, 184; letter from Dr. Holmes, 
204. 

Quincy, Esther, daughter of Ed- 
mund, 72 ; marries Jonathan Sew- 
all, 173. 

Quincy, Hannah (b. 1736), daughter 
of Josiali, 72. 172. 

Quincy, Henry (1726-80), marries 
Mary Salter, 171; daughter, 178; 
Dorotliy. 225. 

Quincy, Dr. Henry P., marries Mary 
Adams, 141, 145, 184,227. 

Quincy, Joanna (Hoar), marriage, 
46. .55. 

Quincy, John (b. 1089), on church 
conmiittee. .39 ; Pres. J. Q. Adams 
named after, si ; (Quincy named 
after, 98 ; his public services, 
157. 

Quincy. Col. Josiah (1709-84), 72 ; 
marries Hannah Sturgis, 168; en- 
riched by capture of Spanisli ship, 
168 ; public services and death, 
178. 

Quincy, Josiah, Jr. (1744-75), pa- 



triotic services, 82, 83, 172 ; death, 

181. 

Quincy, Pres. Josiah (1772-1864), 
president of Harvard, 60; de- 
scribes Abigail Adams, 95; career, 
181-183 ; cited, 237. 

Quincy, Josiah, mayor of Boston, 

1896-99, 185. 

Quincy, Josiah, son of Pres., b. 1802, 
describes Hancock's church. 99; 
public services, 183 ; witnesses 
deed of Adams Academy, 277. 

Quincy, Josiah Phillips, son of pre- 
ceding, 184. 280. 

Quincy, Judith (d. 1654), life, 42-47 ; 
settles in Hraintree, 62. 

Quincy, Judith (1626-95), 42; mar- 
ries John Hull, 44; Point Judith 
named for, 45 ; obituary, 46. 

Quincy, Norton. 93. 

Quincy, Samuel, the Tory, 72, 172, 
176. 179. 

Quincy, Samuel M., 184. 

(}uincy, Sophia M.. 184. 

Quincy system, 75, 143. 

Kadcliffe College, Joanna Hoar 

scliolarship, 58. 
KadclifTe, Lady, 59. 
Kailwav, oldest, 258. 
Randall, John C, 278. 
Reed, Timothy, 279. 
Religion, liberal, espoused by Vane, 

35; defeated by "legalists,'' 36; 

toleration in. advocated by Col. 

John Quincy, 39; by Leonard 

Hoar. .53. 
Repubhcan party, origin, 127. 
Rice, Harry L., 279. 
Rice, Wm. P., gift of City Hospital, 

146 ; residence. 279. 
Russell, Earl, 130, 134. 

Salter. Mary, marries H. Quincy, 

171. 225. 
Salsbury. 193. 
Savage. Epbraim. 152. 
Savil, Dr. Elisha, 71, 74. 
Savil, WilUam. 152. 
Schenkelberger, A. F., 277. 
Scott, Captain James, marries 

Dorothy Hancock. 224. 
Sears. Russell A, mayor, 257. 
Sewall. David, companion of Tutor 

Flvnt, 243. 
Sewall, Jonathan, 72,173; a Tory, 

176. 
Sewall. Judge Samuel, marries 
Hannah Hull, 44: account of fu- 
neral of Bridget (Hoar) Usher, 
55 ; Daniel Quiney's marriage, 
152 ; lodges in Quincy mansion, 
163; disputes with Tutor Flynt, 
240. 



INDEX 



289 



Sewall, Samuel, 173. 

Shaw, John, 277. 

Sheehan, Dr. J. M., 275. 

Shipyards, 260. 

Slade, James H., 253. 

Slavery, opposed by J. Q. Adams, 

118. 
Slaves in Quincy, 154. 
Smith, Abigail, marries John 

Adams, 76, 158. 
Smith, H. W. 102. 
Smith, Captain John, 28, 250. 
Smith, Mary, marries Kichard 

Cranch, 75. 
Smith, Sarah, 102. 
Smith, Kev. William, 75, 76, 158. 
Souther, John, 260. 
Spanish treasure ship, captured, 

169. 
Spear, Horace B., 253. 
Spoils system, opposed by J. Q. 

Adams, 117. 
Squanto, friendly Indian, 261. 
Squantum, cairn to Myles Stand- 

ish, 261. 
Standish, Myles, 15 ; at Merry- 
Mount, 17 ; memorial cairn, 261. 
Stedman, Dr. John, 225. 
Stetson, Dr. James A., 274. 
Stetson, James H., 273. 
Stockton, Kichard, 90. 
Stoddard, Simeon, 55. 
Storer, Hannah, 170. 
Stuart, Queen Mary, 165. 
Sturgis, Hannah, 168. 
Sturtevant, T. L., 279. 
Swithin Bros., 258. 

Talleyrand, Charles M. de, 136. 
Tavern, Hancock, 267; Brackett's, 

272. 
Taxation without representation, 7. 
Teapot, of Tutor Flynt, 206, 230. 
Thomas, Deacon, 260. 
Tlionipson, lienjamin, 155. 
Thompson, James, 267. 
Titus, Mrs. N. V., 258, 262. 
Town meetings, 3 ; in Quincy, 251. 
Training Field, 251, 268. 
Trumbull's painting of the signing 

of the Declaration, 91. 
Tyler, Wm. Koyall, master of 

Adams Academy, 278. 
Tyng, Capt. John, buys Coddington 

estate, 42. 
Uphani, Dorothy Q., 226. 



Upham, O. W. H., 226. 
Usher, Bridget, 54, 55, 150. 

Vane, Sir Harry, the older, 35. 
Vane, Sir Harry, in Coddington's 

house, 32 ; liberal leader, 35 ; goes 

to England, 37. 
Yassall, Leonard, 98. 
Vining, Floretta, 259. 
Virginia, instructs representatives, 

79, 89, 90. 

Wales, Mrs. Wm., quoted, 224. 

Warren, Dr. Joseph, 82, 87. 

Washington, Pres. George, birth- 
place, 69 ; appointment as general 
secured by J. Adams, 87 ; praises 
J. Q. Adams, 110. 

Waterston, Mrs. K., 184. 

Webster, Daniel, 125, 267. 

Weddings, golden, of John, John 
Quincy, and C. F. Adams, 99, 139. 

AVelch, Dr. John F., 272. 

Wendell, Elizabeth, 164, 177. 

Wendell, Geo. B., 259. 

Wendell, John, 40, 164. 

Wendell, Judge Oliver, 166, 186, 206. 

Wheelwright, Edmund M., 269. 

Wheelwright, Kev. John, in Cod- 
dington's farmhouse, 32 ; preaches 
at "the Mount," 35 ; builds meet- 
ing-house, 36 ; banished, 37 ; me- 
morial tablet, 267. 

Whicher, Thos., 279. 

Whitefield, Rev. Geo., 241. 

Whitney, Mrs. Abigail, 103, 139. 

Whitney, Capt. John, 104. 

Whittier, John G., 25, 221, 

Wibird, Rev. A., 71, 81, 158, 172. 

Willard, Solomon, 264. 

Willet, Esther, marries Josiah 
Flynt, 195, 232. 

Willet, Capt. Thomas, mayor of 
New York, 195, 232. 

Wilson, Rev. D. M., 190. 

Wilson, Rev. John, 33, 34; legalist 
leader, 36, 280. 

Winthrop, Gov., quoted, 3 ; on Mass. 
charter, 5 ; Sir Christopher Gardi- 
ner, 23, 44. 

" Wisdom Corner " In town meeting, 
252. 

Woodward, Dr. E., 146, 188, 260. 

Woodward Institute, 189. 

Wollaston, Capt., 15. 

WoUaston Heights, 279. 



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